nwdc

Simple script and binary to display Node.js and Chromium console messages in the terminal, when launching NW.js applications from the Windows command line.

Normally, when running the NW.js SDK in Windows, the nw executable immediately forks a new process and quits. This prevents being able to monitor the terminal for console logs or other messages from Chromium. When launching an NW.js application via nwdc, a wrapper process is kept running that will display output from the main Node.js process and all spawned Chromium windows.

Usage For Development Environment (With Node.js Installed)

1. Install the NW.js SDK:

   a. Add nw@0.60.0-sdk (choose the desired version) to the package.json file of the NW.js application being developed.

   b. Download the SDK from https://nwjs.io/downloads/ and extract it to a directory within the PATH environment variable.

2. Add nwdc to the NW.js application being developed:

   npm:

   npm i nwdc

   Yarn:

   yarn add nwdc

3. Run the NW.js application using npx nwdc . instead of nw ..

4. Press CTRL+C or close your NW.js application normally, to stop the nwdc.exe process.

Usage For Production Environment (Without Node.js Installed)

1. Download the SDK from https://nwjs.io/downloads/ and extract it to a directory within the PATH environment variable.

2. Download a pre-built nwdc.exe binary from Releases or build one manually: npm i && npm run build or yarn && yarn build

   NOTE: It is useful to copy the nwdc.exe file to the same directory as NW.js, so it can be executed without providing the full path.

3. Run your NW.js application using nwdc instead of nw.

   Example #1 -- From NW.js application directory when nwdc.exe is not in PATH:

   C:\Users\Me\Downloads\nwdc.exe .

   Example #2 -- From external directory when nwdc.exe is in PATH:

   nwdc C:\Users\Me\Documents\Code\MyApp\

4. Press CTRL+C or close your NW.js application normally, to stop the nwdc.exe process.

Modify nw.exe to change the Windows Subsystem Type

As an alternative to nwdc, any hex editor can be used to modify byte 0xD4 of the nw.exe binary to change the Windows Subsystem type from 02 (IMAGE_SUBSYSTEM_WINDOWS_GUI) to 03 (IMAGE_SUBSYSTEM_WINDOWS_CUI). A quick Node.js script to accomplish this is the following:

const { openSync, writeSync, closeSync } = require('node:fs');
const fd = openSync('nw.exe', 'r+');
writeSync(fd, '\x03', 0xd4, 'binary');
closeSync(fd);

More information on the Windows Subsystem types can be found here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/debug/pe-format