child_process.spawn not working on Windows

[feickertm]

While I was trying to run caliper bind on windows. I was getting the error that it is not able to spawn the npm child process.

Context

I am not sure if this is only a problem with my special setup, but it seems Windows has some problems with spawning a child process. I am no JavaScript expert, but as I understand it child_process.spawn ignores the PATHEXT on Windows and therefore won't find the npm.cmd.

Is anyone facing the same issue on Windows or can reproduce this?

Expected Behavior

npx caliper bind --caliper-bind-sut fabric:2.2
runs without error

Actual Behavior

executing npx caliper bind --caliper-bind-sut fabric:2.2 on Windows gives the following error

$ npx caliper bind --caliper-bind-sut fabric:2.2
2021.11.24-13:43:42.959 info  [caliper] [bind]  Binding for fabric@2.2. This might take some time...
2021.11.24-13:43:42.960 info  [caliper] [bind]  Calling npm with: install fabric-network@2.2.3 fabric-ca-client@2.2.3
node:events:368
      throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
      ^

Error: spawn npm ENOENT
    at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (node:internal/child_process:282:19)
    at onErrorNT (node:internal/child_process:477:16)
    at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:83:21)
Emitted 'error' event on ChildProcess instance at:
    at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (node:internal/child_process:288:12)
    at onErrorNT (node:internal/child_process:477:16)
    at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:83:21) {
  errno: -4058,
  code: 'ENOENT',
  syscall: 'spawn npm',
  path: 'npm',
  spawnargs: [ 'install', 'fabric-network@2.2.3', 'fabric-ca-client@2.2.3' ]
}

I have tried it using different node and npm versions, so I guess it is not a problem with my node or npm.

Possible Fix

I was able to fix this problem, by changing const {exec, spawn} = require('child_process'); to

const exec = require('child_process');
const spawn = require('cross-spawn');

In caliper-utils.js
This is replacing nodes own spawn with a cross plattform solution.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install caliper node package on Windows
2. run npx caliper bind --caliper-bind-sut fabric:2.2

Your Environment

• Version used: Caliper v0.4.2, Fabric v2.2
• Environment name and version: node 14.13.1 with npm 6.4.1 and node 16.13.0 with 8.1.0
• Operating System and version: Windows 10

[davidkel]

This has actually been fixed already by #1127
but unfortunately not available in a release yet. Closing