PLUGINS.md

Plugin support

Did you know that shx can also take advantage of all the great ShellJS plugins? Here's how to get started using plugins with your project:

Using plugins from inside package.json scripts

$ npm install --save-dev shx
$ npm install --save-dev shelljs-plugin-sleep

Define a file named .shxrc.json to tell shx which plugins to load:

{
  "plugins": [
    "shelljs-plugin-sleep"
  ]
}

Define a script in package.json which invokes the desired shx plugin as a command:

{
  // Your other package.json stuff goes here...
  "scripts": {
    "my-cool-script": "echo 'sleep for 3 seconds' && shx sleep 3"
  }
  // ...
}

And now you can run your package.json script:

$ npm run my-cool-script

Important: make sure you execute this via the npm run script, do not try to call shx directly from your terminal. If you call shx directly in the terminal, then shx won't be able to import the plugins from your local node_modules/ directory. Calling this via npm run script fixes the problem because npm automatically adds node_modules/ to the import path.

Note: shx will only load plugins if a .shxrc.json file is present in the working directory, so it's recommended to add this JSON file to the top level of your project, right next to your project's package.json file.