npm-run-all vs ampersand

[Webbrother]

I'm not sure if understand of difference between:

• npm-run-all script-one script-two and
• script-one & script-two

Can anybody explain? What is the difference? Why I should use npm-run-all?

[mysticatea]

Thank you for the question.

At first, npm-run-all script-one script-two and script-one & script-two is pretty different. The npm-run-all script-one script-two is equivalence to npm run script-one && npm run script-two. In short, npm-run-all is a tool to run multiple npm-scripts. In addition;

• You can use glob-like pattern matching. E.g. npm-run-all build:**. This allow you to simplify npm-scripts.
• You can run multiple npm-scripts in parallel on cross platform. E.g. npm-run-all -p watch:js watch:css. This is almost equivalence to npm run watch:js & npm run watch:css, but works on Windows which doesn't support the & operator, as well.
• Maybe --race option is useful for tests. E.g. npm-run-all -p -r test-server test runs the test server and test in parallel, then it will kill the test-server automatically after the test completed.

Documents is here: https://github.com/mysticatea/npm-run-all/blob/master/docs/npm-run-all.md