cross-spawn is a Node.js package that provides a consistent way to spawn child processes across different operating systems. It normalizes arguments and handles platform-specific differences, ensuring consistent behavior for running executables regardless of whether the user is on Windows, macOS, or Linux. By abstracting away OS intricacies, cross-spawn simplifies cross-platform development and reduces the likelihood of unexpected errors when spawning processes in Node.js applications. It's a dependency for many popular npm packages due to its reliability.
Cross-spawn's release frequency has been sporadic. Initially, releases were common in 2014-2016, with multiple versions per month. Activity decreased significantly after 2018, with long periods of no releases. A small resurgence occurred in late 2019 and 2020, but since then there have been very few versions published, with the last releases in November 2024.
Cross-spawn downloads show a general upward trend from March 2024 to July 2025, peaking at over 511 million in June 2025. August 2025 saw a decline, and September 2025 downloads are incomplete and significantly lower, likely due to the month being in progress.
