Cygwin, CoffeeScript & Growl for Windows integration

Let’s start by adjusting where node.js looks for libraries. We will need this later on when we use the newly implemented -r command-line switch in CoffeeScript. Open up your shell init file, in my instance ~/.zshrc:

$ vim ~/.zshrc

and add a line in there:

export NODE_PATH="/cygdrive/d/Workspace/public/coffee-script/.coffee_libraries:$NODE_PATH"

The path can be anywhere on your system so adjust it accordingly. Let’s go ahead and create a file inside .coffee_libraries, name it growlnotify-windows.coffee and paste this code inside of it:

{ exec } = require 'child_process'

icon = null
require('fs').realpath "#{__dirname}/icon-coffee-cup.png", (exception, path) ->
  exec "cygpath -w '#{path}'", (exception, stdout) ->
    icon = stdout
    process()

queue = []
process = ->
  exec "
  growlnotify
    '/a:CoffeeScript'
    '/i:\"#{ icon.replace(/"/g, '\\"') }\"'
    '/r:\"success\",\"exception\"'
    '/n:\"exception\"'
    '/p:2'
    '/s:true'
    \"/t:\\\"#{ exception.message.replace(/"/g, '\\"') }\\\"\"
    \"#{ exception.stack.replace(/"/g, '\\"').replace(/\n/g, '\\n') }\"
  " while exception = queue.shift()

CoffeeScript.on 'failure', (exception, task) ->
  queue.push exception
  process() if icon

We also need a proper icon — save it in the script folder as icon-coffee-cup.png.

Next time you run the coffee command line utility, append -r growlnotify-windows like so:

$ coffee -r growlnotify-windows -wc src/

and when the compiler encounters an exception, you will receive a nice UI prompt like this:

Happy coding!