how to control where spawnCommand method executes - node.js

Question

How can I understand and control from where spawnCommand runs?
I am creating a yo generator and as part of the process I need to call an external tool. The way I am attmepting to do this is by calling a powershell script from spawnCommand. I was having trouble with spawnCommand having spaces in paths, so I just encapsulated that within the powershell file. I saw something about superspawn but couldn't get it to work.
Anyway, my main problem is that I am trying to call powershell and give it the script file as an argument, but it can't find the script file. Here is the code:
signatureKeyFile: function() {
var done = this.async();
this.spawnCommand('powershell', ['sign.ps1'], {
cwd: this.destinationPath('.')
}).on('close', done);
},
I tried using procmon to see what directory it executes from and understand it better. It looks like it tries it in a ton of places, but seemingly all environment paths. It doesn't try the source or destination path for the yo generator, or at least that's how it seemed to me.
So my questions are
1) which working directory does spawnCommand run from by default?
2) How can I contorl that so it can find the this powershell file? spawnCommand won't let me use spaces in paths, so I can't feed it a full path or so it seems to me.
Thanks so much!

Answer 1

spawnCommand won't let me use spaces in paths, so I can't feed it a full path or so it seems to me.
That's usually a well known issues of command line. Arguments are separated by spaces, so it just assume your path is actually multiples arguments.
I'm not 100% for windows, but on OSx, you'd espace spaces as some\ path\ with\ spaces.
Another options is to pass arguments as strings. What if you were to wrap your path in double quotes?
this.spawnCommand('powershell', ['"/home/My Home/sign.ps1"']);
FWIW, Yeoman spawnCommand is just a wrapper for Node spawn command where we help normalize a command so it'll run fine on windows. See
https://github.com/yeoman/generator/blob/master/lib/actions/spawn-command.js#L20
https://nodejs.org/api/child_process.html#child_process_child_process_spawn_command_args_options
It'll help you to test the correct syntax to pass path if you can reduce the scope of your problem to only the Node spawn command.
[Edited to fix broken link]

Answer 2

We were able to solve it by setting the current working directory or cwd, with the spaces:
this.spawnCommandSync('sn.exe', ['-k', format("{0}\\{1}.snk", this.destinationPath('.'), this.props.myItemName)], {
cwd: 'C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft SDKs\\Windows\\v10.0A\\bin\\NETFX 4.6 Tools'
});