Provide alternative for npm bin use case

[ngraef]

Background

As of npm@9, npm bin is removed.

Problem

My team uses some npm scripts that are structured like the following:

"some-script": "node -r dotenv/config $(npm bin)/some-cli command arg"

The alternative to npm bin provided in the npm v9 release notes says "use npx or npm exec to execute binaries", though I don't believe they support this use case of injecting dotenv.

Alternatives

1. Hard code node_modules/.bin/some-cli: 👎 (this is bad because the path is an npm implementation detail, right?)
2. Use $(which some-cli): I don't think this is portable to Windows
3. Is there a new npm command I don't know about that would solve this?
4. dotenv-cli looks promising (dotenv npx some-cli?), though it's annoying to install another dependency for this

Question

Is there any recommendation for updating this script to be compatible with npm v9?

[ljharb]

I’d love to see an npm which command which locates a binary using npm exec’s algorithm.

[wraithgar]

This will not work in windows

Here's a band-aid if you do not need to support windows

~/D/n/s/npx $ cat package.json
{
  "name": "npx",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "scripts": {
    "example": "node -r dotenv/config $(npm prefix -g)/bin/npx foo bar"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "dotenv": "^16.0.3"
  },
  "bin": {
    "foo": "./foo.js"
  }
}
~/D/n/s/npx $ cat .env 
HELLO=WORLD
~/D/n/s/npx $ cat foo.js 
#!/usr/bin/env node

console.log(process.env.HELLO)
console.log(process.argv)
~/D/n/s/npx $ npm run example

> [email protected] example
> node -r dotenv/config $(npm prefix -g)/bin/npx foo bar

WORLD
[
  '/Users/wraithgar/.nvm/versions/node/v18.12.0/bin/node',
  '/Users/wraithgar/.npm/_npx/c95967b95d2bdfc5/node_modules/.bin/foo',
  'bar'
]

Unfortunately the "bin" directory in windows is the global prefix, not a subdirectory.

[ngraef]

Interesting option to take advantage of npx's resolution. Thanks for the input.