Commander.js: Error: command does not exist

[hossamelmansy]

const program = require("commander");

program.version("0.0.1");
program.description("Webotron deploys websites to AWS");

program
  .command("list-buckets", "List all S3 buckets")
  .action(function() {
    console.log("list-buckets");
  })
  .parse(process.argv);

why this code snippet throws that error, this is the output when running the command:

››› node 01-webotron/webotron.js list-buckets                                                                                      
list-buckets
error: webotron-list-buckets(1) does not exist, try --help

OS: macOS
nodeJS version: v13.6.0
commander: "^4.1.0"

am I doing something wrong?

[shadowspawn]

For historical reasons, .command() for an action handler has the description separately. When the description is included Commander assumes you have an executable subcommand. You want:

program
  .command("list-buckets")
  .description("List all S3 buckets")

See https://github.com/tj/commander.js#commands for examples

[hossamelmansy]

Thank you for your quick response, I don’t know that, I’ll try it out :)

[shadowspawn]

On a related note, I have changed the "error" to a "throw" in #1165 with some additional tips to hopefully make it quicker for the author to recognise and resolve the problem. (This change is not in a published prerelease yet.)

[shadowspawn]

Commander v5.0.0 has been released with additional error output to make it easier to recognise and correct this issue.

https://github.com/tj/commander.js/releases/tag/v5.0.0