Node 23: "heap out of memory" error when preferLocal option is enabled

[cedx]

A simple script like this one causes a memory overflow when the preferLocal option is enabled:

import {execa} from "execa";
const $ = execa({preferLocal: true, stdio: "inherit"});
await $`node --version`;

// Error... but OK when `preferLocal` is `false`.

The resulting output is as follows:

<--- Last few GCs --->

[16584:000001E95B1B6000]    39610 ms: Scavenge (interleaved) 2041.5 (2046.8) -> 2038.9 (2047.3) MB, pooled: 0 MB, 4.57 / 0.00 ms  (average mu = 0.173, current mu = 0.139) allocation failure;
[16584:000001E95B1B6000]    41666 ms: Mark-Compact (reduce) 2039.1 (2047.3) -> 2038.9 (2041.1) MB, pooled: 0 MB, 1652.12 / 0.00 ms  (+ 1.6 ms in 0 steps since start of marking, biggest step 0.0 ms, walltime since start of marking 1657 ms) (average mu = 0.

<--- JS stacktrace --->

FATAL ERROR: Ineffective mark-compacts near heap limit Allocation failed - JavaScript heap out of memory
----- Native stack trace -----

 1: 00007FF7809025DB node::SetCppgcReference+15707
 2: 00007FF78086B7F8 DSA_meth_get_flags+98136
 3: 00007FF78156CF71 v8::Isolate::ReportExternalAllocationLimitReached+65
 4: 00007FF7815597B6 v8::Function::Experimental_IsNopFunction+2710
 5: 00007FF781390680 v8::internal::StrongRootAllocatorBase::StrongRootAllocatorBase+34016
 6: 00007FF78138997D v8::internal::StrongRootAllocatorBase::StrongRootAllocatorBase+6109
 7: 00007FF78138589D v8::Platform::SystemClockTimeMillis+655213
 8: 00007FF780BA0D1D BIO_ssl_shutdown+189
 9: 00007FF78138D214 v8::internal::StrongRootAllocatorBase::StrongRootAllocatorBase+20596
10: 00007FF7813F1F1A v8::Locker::IsLocked+7338
11: 00007FF78105CBD0 v8::internal::Version::GetString+451664
12: 00007FF7215F027A

execa v9.4.1
Node.js v23.0.0
Windows 10 (x64)

[cedx]

It seems that the problem lies solely with Node.js and not with this package (see nodejs/node#55418).

[ehmicky]

Thanks for reporting @cedx.

To anyone impacted: this seems to be a bug with Node.js 23.0.0, which is currently being fixed. Workaround is to keep using Node 22 until the fix is released.

[cedx]

Issue fixed in Node.js v23.1.0.

[ehmicky]

Great! Thanks for the notification @cedx.