 <p>After reviewing all the other answers, I ended up with this:</p> <pre><code>function oldSchoolMakeBuild(cb) { var makeProcess = exec('make -C ./oldSchoolMakeBuild', function (error, stdout, stderr) { stderr &amp;&amp; console.error(stderr); cb(error); }); makeProcess.stdout.on('data', function(data) { process.stdout.write('oldSchoolMakeBuild: '+ data); }); } </code></pre> <p>Sometimes <code>data</code> will be multiple lines, so the <code>oldSchoolMakeBuild</code> header will appear once for multiple lines. But this didn't bother me enough to change it.</p>