Migrating from object.ref()/object.unref() to process.ref()/process.unref()

[jasnell]

Node.js has long had a pattern of attaching a ref() and unref() method to various i/o objects that are bound to the event loop. Calling thing.unref() makes it so the thing does not keep the event loop alive.

For instance,

const i = setInterval(() => {}, 1000);
i.unref();

While this has worked effectively for Node.js specific APIs, it's rather cumbersome with web platform standard APIs. I'd like to propose a change: Introduce new process.unref(thing) and process.ref(thing) API that would accept multiple different kinds of ref'able types.

const i = setInterval(() => {}, 1000);
process.unref(i);
// etc

A number of API objects that currently have .ref()/.unref() methods:

• dgram.Socket
• net.Socket
• net.Server
• child_process.ChildProcess
• child_process.Control
• StatWatcher
• FSWatcher
• MessagePort
• Timeout
• Interval
• Worker
• Http2Session
• BroadcastChannel

The idea would be to mark the existing object-specific ref() and unref() methods as legacy and depend on the process.ref()/process.unref() as the supported mechanism moving forward.

/cc @mcollina

[benjamingr]

+1 this makes sense to do from the outside

[mcollina]

+1 for me.

However we are never going to be able to remove the previous methods either (unfortunately), as they will break everybody.

[anonrig]

+1

[jasnell]

Ok, given the thumbs up on it, I'll start working this up

[jasnell]

@mcollina :

However we are never going to be able to remove the previous methods either (unfortunately), as they will break everybody.

Yeah, I know. My plan would be to keep those existing methods in place but change them to use the new mechanism under the covers. The public APIs would then be marked as legacy with a note to use the new process.(un)ref API.