Command Line Interface

Deno is a command line program. You should be familiar with some simple commands having followed the examples thus far and already understand the basics of shell usage.

There are multiple ways of viewing the main help text:

# Using the subcommand.
deno help

# Using the short flag -- outputs the same as above.
deno -h

# Using the long flag -- outputs more detailed help text where available.
deno --help

Deno's CLI is subcommand-based. The above commands should show you a list of subcommands supported, such as deno compile. To see subcommand-specific help, for example for compile, you can similarly run one of:

deno help compile
deno compile -h
deno compile --help

Detailed guides for each subcommand can be found here.

Script source

Deno can grab the scripts from multiple sources, a filename, a url, and '-' to read the file from stdin. The latter is useful for integration with other applications.

deno run main.ts
deno run https://mydomain.com/main.ts
cat main.ts | deno run -

Script arguments

Separately from the Deno runtime flags, you can pass user-space arguments to the script you are running by specifying them after the script name:

deno run main.ts a b -c --quiet

// main.ts
console.log(Deno.args); // [ "a", "b", "-c", "--quiet" ]

Note that anything passed after the script name will be passed as a script argument and not consumed as a Deno runtime flag. This leads to the following pitfall:

# Good. We grant net permission to net_client.ts.
deno run --allow-net net_client.ts

# Bad! --allow-net was passed to Deno.args, throws a net permission error.
deno run net_client.ts --allow-net

Some see it as unconventional that:

a non-positional flag is parsed differently depending on its position.

However:

1. This is the most logical and ergonomic way of distinguishing between runtime flags and script arguments.
2. This is, in fact, the same behaviour as that of any other popular runtime.
   • Try node -c index.js and node index.js -c. The first will only do a syntax check on index.js as per Node's -c flag. The second will execute index.js with -c passed to require("process").argv.

---

There exist logical groups of flags that are shared between related subcommands. We discuss these below.

Watch mode

You can supply the --watch flag to deno run, deno test, deno compile, and deno fmt to enable the built-in file watcher. The files that are watched depend on the subcommand used:

• for deno run, deno test, and deno compile the entrypoint, and all local files the entrypoint(s) statically import(s) will be watched.
• for deno fmt all local files and directories specified as command line arguments (or the working directory if no specific files/directories is passed) are watched.

Whenever one of the watched files is changed on disk, the program will automatically be restarted / formatted / tested / bundled.

deno run --watch main.ts
deno test --watch
deno fmt --watch

You can exclude paths from watching by providing the --watch-exclude flag. This flag works only with deno run. The syntax is --watch-exclude=path1,path2. For example:

deno run --watch --watch-exclude=file1.ts,file2.ts main.ts

This will exclude file1.ts and file2.ts from being watched.

Hot Module Replacement mode

You can use --unstable-hmr flag with deno run to enable the hot module replacement mode. Instead of restarting the program, the runtime will try to update the program in-place. If updating in-place fails, the program will still be restarted.

deno run --unstable-hmr main.ts

When a hot module replacement is triggered, the runtime will dispatch a CustomEvent of type hmr that will include path property in its detail object. You can listen for this event and perform any additional logic that you need to do when a module is updated (eg. notify a browser over a WebSocket connection).

addEventListener("hmr", (e) => {
  console.log("HMR triggered", e.detail.path);
});

Integrity flags (lock files)

Affect commands which can download resources to the cache: deno cache, deno run, deno test, deno doc, and deno compile.

--lock <FILE>    Check the specified lock file
--lock-write     Write lock file. Use with --lock.

Find out more about these here.

Cache and compilation flags

Affect commands which can populate the cache: deno cache, deno run, deno test, deno doc, and deno compile. As well as the flags above, this includes those which affect module resolution, compilation configuration etc.

--config <FILE>               Load configuration file
--import-map <FILE>           Load import map file
--no-remote                   Do not resolve remote modules
--reload=<CACHE_BLOCKLIST>    Reload source code cache (recompile TypeScript)
--unstable                    Enable unstable APIs

Runtime flags

Affect commands which execute user code: deno run and deno test. These include all of the above as well as the following.

Type checking flags

You can type-check your code (without executing it) using the command:

> deno check main.ts

You can also type-check your code before execution by using the --check argument to deno run:

> deno run --check main.ts

This flag affects deno run, deno eval, deno repl and deno cache. The following table describes the type-checking behavior of various subcommands. Here "Local" means that only errors from local code will induce type-errors, modules imported from https URLs (remote) may have type errors that are not reported. (To turn on type-checking for all modules, use --check=all.)

Subcommand	Type checking mode
deno bench	📁 Local
deno cache	❌ None
deno check	📁 Local
deno compile	📁 Local
deno eval	❌ None
deno repl	❌ None
deno run	❌ None
deno test	📁 Local

Permission flags

These are listed here.

Other runtime flags

More flags which affect the execution environment.

--cached-only                Require that remote dependencies are already cached
--inspect=<HOST:PORT>        activate inspector on host:port ...
--inspect-brk=<HOST:PORT>    activate inspector on host:port and break at ...
--inspect-wait=<HOST:PORT>   activate inspector on host:port and wait for ...
--location <HREF>            Value of 'globalThis.location' used by some web APIs
--prompt                     Fallback to prompt if required permission wasn't passed
--seed <NUMBER>              Seed Math.random()
--v8-flags=<v8-flags>        Set V8 command line options. For help: ...

Autocomplete

You can get IDE-style autocompletions for Deno with Fig . It works in bash, zsh, and fish.

To install, run:

brew install fig