Problem
Several upstream Node.js tests verify behavior that causes the process to exit abnormally — uncaught exceptions from finalizers, fatal errors, etc. These tests use a subprocess pattern:
- Spawn a child process that loads the addon and triggers the crash
- Assert on the child's exit code and stderr output
The CTS currently has no equivalent harness primitive for this pattern.
Affected tests
test_exception/testFinalizerException.js (js-native-api) — finalizer throws during GC, expects process exit with "Error during Finalize" on stderr
test_fatal (node-api) — calls napi_fatal_error, expects process abort with specific message
Proposed solution
Add a harness helper that runs a code snippet in a subprocess and asserts on the outcome:
// Possible API shape:
await expectCrash({
code: () => {
const addon = loadAddon('test_exception');
addon.createExternal();
// trigger GC...
},
stderr: /Error during Finalize/,
exitCode: (code) => code !== 0,
});
Each implementor would provide the subprocess execution mechanism (e.g., Node.js would use child_process.spawnSync).
Considerations
- The helper needs to be implementor-provided since subprocess APIs are runtime-specific
- The test code to run in the subprocess may need access to
loadAddon and other CTS globals
- Some crashes are signal-based (SIGABRT from
napi_fatal_error) vs exception-based — the helper should handle both