Can't use node::FatalError()

[gabrielschulhof]

... because node_internals.h is not available outside of node. So, if we want node-api to contain unaltered versions of the implementation, we must not rely on any node internals.

I guess we could simply throw a JS exception. Since Isolate::GetCurrent() is going away, and since we don't have an env from which to extract an isolate, is there some other way we can signal that we wish to throw an exception?

[bnoordhuis]

I guess we could simply throw a JS exception.

FatalError() is a noreturn function. Its n-api equivalent shouldn't throw an exception, it should exit.

[addaleax]

Just copying Node’s FatalError, i.e. fprintf() + fflush() + abort(), sounds good to me too.

Since Isolate::GetCurrent() is going away

Just curious, is that publicly announced anywhere?

[bnoordhuis]

Just curious, is that publicly announced anywhere?

Not really, but V8 people have repeatedly indicated over the years they want to get rid of it.

[gabrielschulhof]

@addaleax well, it's actually more than that, because in Windows it's raise(SIGABRT), and not fprintf() but WriteConsoleW(), etc. So, there's quite a bit of code in node.cc dealing with this.

[gabrielschulhof]

@bnoordhuis we were originally debating whether we should consider the absence of an env a fatal error or not. There was a good argument for "not" in that this is just a module, so perhaps the whole app shouldn't be shot down because of a buggy module. The reason we went with the "aye" in the end was that it's very much a corner case anyway.

[gabrielschulhof]

But without an env, and hence without an isolate, we can't even throw an exception.

[gabrielschulhof]

We can wrap the call to node::FatalError() in #if defined(NODE_WANT_INTERNALS) && NODE_WANT_INTERNALS to avoid failure to compile outside of node, but we should really have something in the #else case.

[jasongin]

I'm still not convinced we need FatalError() functionality. The one place where it is used now could return a napi_status error instead.

[jasongin]

Related: nodejs/node-addon-api#25

[jasongin]

We might want to actually expose node::FatalError() (or similar) as a napi_fatal_error() API. See nodejs/node-addon-api#32 (comment) for a scenario where it is needed.