@liminal-machines-co/serial

A small, fast serial port library for Node.js with a Zig-backed native core. Prebuilt native binaries for all platforms are bundled into the package, so you probably can just install and go without any build process after install.

Install

npm install @liminal-machines-co/serial

Usage

import { SerialPort, ReadlineParser } from "@liminal-machines-co/serial";

const port = new SerialPort({ path: "/dev/ttyUSB0", baudRate: 115200 });
await port.open();

port.pipe(new ReadlineParser()).on("data", (line) => console.log(line));
await port.write("AT\r\n");

const ports = await SerialPort.list(); // [{ path, portType }, ...]

A SerialPort is a Node Readable, so everything you know about streams applies. See examples/ for runnable scripts.

CLI

List ports without writing any code:

npx liminal-serial list          # table of available ports
npx liminal-serial list --json   # machine-readable JSON

PATH                             TYPE
/dev/cu.usbserial-1420           cu
/dev/cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port  cu

Parsers

Transform streams you compose onto a port with .pipe():

• ReadlineParser — split on a delimiter (default \n)
• ByteLengthParser — fixed-size length-byte frames
• InterByteTimeoutParser — emit after an inter-byte gap
• RegexParser — split on a pattern

Testing without hardware

MockSerialPort is a drop-in for SerialPort, so you can test your serial logic with no device attached:

import { MockSerialPort } from "@liminal-machines-co/serial";

const port = new MockSerialPort({ path: "/dev/mock", baudRate: 9600 });
port.mockReply("PING", "PONG\n");
await port.open();
await port.write("PING"); // emits "PONG\n" on 'data'
port.getWrittenData(); // Buffer of everything written
port.simulateFault("disconnect");

Platform support

Platform	Enumeration	Serial IO
macOS (arm64, x64)	✅	✅
Linux (x64, arm64)	✅	✅
Windows (x64)	⏳ planned	⏳ planned (loads; methods throw)

Windows cross-compiles and loads today (its import library is generated from node_api.def), but native serial IO and port enumeration aren't wired up yet — a great first contribution if you're on Windows.

Contributing

You'll need Zig 0.16.0 and Node ≥ 18.

npm install
npm run build:native      # build the addon for your host -> prebuilds/
npm run build:prebuilds   # cross-compile every target

Releases go out via npm version + a git tag — see RELEASING.md. Architecture, decisions, and conventions live in CLAUDE.md.

Tests

Tests run on the Bun runner in three suites:

npm test                 # unit: mock + parsers, pure JS, no hardware
npm run test:integration # native addon over a socat PTY pair (needs socat + a host build)
npm run test:hardware    # against a real device (opt-in, see below)
npm run typecheck:test   # type-check the test sources

• Unit (src/**/*.test.ts) — mock and parsers

• Integration (test/integration/) — drives the real native binding through a virtual serial pair made with socat, and checks the line config (dataBits/parity/stopBits) reaches the device via stty. Run npm run build:native first; skips automatically if socat or a binary is missing.

• Hardware (test/hardware/) — an opt-in suite that talks to a real device flashed with the firmware in arduino/test-device/. Point it at a port to run it:

  SERIAL_TEST_PORT=/dev/cu.usbmodem1101 npm run test:hardware

  With SERIAL_TEST_PORT unset it skips, so it never runs in CI or by accident. It exercises the firmware protocol (PING→PONG, ID, ECHO, LINES, BINARY) through the public SerialPort API.

Overview

• src/napi/*.zig — the native addon. root.zig registers the module; serial_port_posix.zig implements NativeSerialPort (background read thread → threadsafe function; async-work Promises for write/drain); enumerate.zig lists ports by scanning /dev.
• src/*.ts — the JS layer: SerialPort (a Readable), MockSerialPort, parsers, and option validation.
• index.js — loads the right prebuilt .node via node-gyp-build.
• Line config uses ZigEmbeddedGroup/serial; N-API headers come from node-api-headers.

License

MIT