yargs: .commandDir(dir) does not work when the yargs definition script is `require`-ed from other file

While I’m building a tool with .commandDir(dir), an error occured when I require lib/cli.js and execute bin/tool.js.

node lib/cli.js works properly.

Directory tree:

.
├── bin
│   └── tool.js
├── lib
│   ├── cli.js
│   └── commands
│       └── foo.js
└── package.json

bin/tool.js:

#!/usr/bin/env node
require('../lib/cli.js');

lib/cli.js:

'use strict';
require('yargs')
.commandDir('commands')
.argv;

lib/commands/foo.js:

'use strict';
exports.command = 'foo';
exports.describe = 'description';
exports.builder = {};
exports.handler = function (argv) { console.log('foo') };

The error message is:

fs.js:945
  return binding.readdir(pathModule._makeLong(path), options.encoding);
                 ^

Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, scandir '/Users/popkirby/Documents/yargs-bug/bin/commands'
    at Error (native)
    at Object.fs.readdirSync (fs.js:945:18)
    at requireDirectory (/Users/popkirby/Documents/yargs-bug/node_modules/require-directory/index.js:59:6)
    at Object.self.addDirectory (/Users/popkirby/Documents/yargs-bug/node_modules/yargs/lib/command.js:72:5)
    at Object.Yargs.self.commandDir (/Users/popkirby/Documents/yargs-bug/node_modules/yargs/yargs.js:211:13)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/popkirby/Documents/yargs-bug/lib/cli.js:4:2)
    at Module._compile (module.js:541:32)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:550:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:458:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (module.js:417:12)

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 8 years ago
Comments: 17 (10 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

@leesei Just run into this, too. I think the problem is that commandDir was added very recently and isn’t included in the latest version available from npm (4.7.1).

@bcoe It would be really nice if you could add version information to your documentation so that it’s easy to tell in which version a function was added. It’s also rather confusing that the docs at http://yargs.js.org/docs/ describe the current development version instead of the latest release on npm. That being said, I’m really looking forward to using commandDir 😉

torfsen on Jun 24, 2016

@popkirby I can confirm this is an issue, thanks for reporting! The problem is that yargs is interpreting a top-level .commandDir() call as relative to require.main.filename, which in this case is /Users/popkirby/Documents/yargs-bug/bin/tool.js. I will need to think about a proper solution.

In the meantime, you can workaround this by using __dirname. E.g. change lib/cli.js to this:

'use strict';
var join = require('path').join;
require('yargs')
  .commandDir(join(__dirname, 'commands'))
  .argv;

nexdrew on Jun 13, 2016