V8 Inspector is not available in --require in `node --test`

[connor4312]

Version

v20.3.0

Platform

Darwin MacBook-Pro-2.local 22.5.0 Darwin Kernel Version 22.5.0: Mon Apr 24 20:51:50 PDT 2023; root:xnu-8796.121.2~5/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

Subsystem

test_runner

What steps will reproduce the bug?

1. Have a file start-inspect.js containing:

const inspector = require("node:inspector");
inspector.open();

2. Have some other file.test.js, which can be empty.
3. Run NODE_OPTIONS="--require ./start-inspect.js" node --test ./hello.test.js

How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?

100%

What is the expected behavior? Why is that the expected behavior?

The inspector should open as usual, as if --test was not given in the CLI

What do you see instead?

$ NODE_OPTIONS="--require ./start-inspect.js" node --test ./hello.test.js

node:inspector:181
  open(port, host);
  ^
This Environment was initialized without a V8::Inspector
(Use `node --trace-uncaught ...` to show where the exception was thrown)

Node.js v20.3.0

Additional information

This does not happen if --test is omitted from the command. This causes issues with the VS/Code debugger which uses this mechanism to initiate debugging. I think Jetbrains does the same thing, so Webstorm and friends probably have the same issue, though I have not tested it.

Also, if I try to open the inspector in the test file itself, it works fine, so it seems like there might be some initialization ordering that's different for --test.

Originally reported on microsoft/vscode-js-debug#1727

[MoLow]

I think this is because the code is trying to access the inspector both in the parent (orchestrator) process, and in the child process.
I guess we should provide a way to determine whether you are inside a test file or not. @cjihrig WDYT?

Edit:
On second thought, This is expected to fail on the parent process, and can be handled with a simple try/catch.
if you really need to know you are now in the main process you can look at the NODE_TEST_CONTEXT environment variable

please LMK if this helps you.

[cjihrig]

I think we may want to look into skipping preloads in the test runner main process, but still propagating the preload flags to the child processes. I can't think of a good reason why preloads need to run for the main process.

[rluvaton]

Tested and had the same problem in webstorm as well

[damianobarbati]

Any news on this? I also have the debugger broken in webstorm when using tsx :(

[github-actions]

This issue has been marked as stale due to 210 days of inactivity.
It will be automatically closed in 30 days if no further activity occurs. If this is still relevant, please leave a comment or update it to keep it open.

[connor4312]

Not stale

[github-actions]

This issue has been marked as stale due to 90 days of inactivity.
It will be automatically closed in 30 days if no further activity occurs. If this is still relevant, please leave a comment or update it to keep it open.

[connor4312]

Not stale