Bug 16591 – Spawn process on windows fails for npm start

Following example is working fine on linux but on windows spawn process fails with an exception. I have following folder structure: ./app.d ./js/helloworld.js ./js/package.json content of helloworld.js: console.log('hello world'); content of package.json: { "name": "test", "version": "1.0.0", "scripts": { "start": "node helloworld.js" } } content of app.d import std.process, std.path, std.file, std.stdio; void main() { string workDir = buildPath(thisExePath.dirName, "js"); string[] args = ["npm", "start"]; spawnProcess(args, std.stdio.stdin, std.stdio.stdout, std.stdio.stderr, null, std.process.Config.none, workDir); } I compile with dmd and then start the application. On windows spawn process is not able to execute > npm start. On Ubuntu Linux the application works fine. To install node on ubuntu: curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_4.x | sudo -E bash - sudo apt-get install -y nodejs For windows there is setup routine available on nodejs.org

CreateProcessW supports running only executables, and I suppose npm is a script. Try to run the actual V8 interpreter executable.

Ah, it's a batch file, then use spawnShell("npm.cmd start",...)