addons/stringbytes-external-exceed-max tests flake on AIX

[joyeecheung]

These are flaking in a strange way: they are supposed to be skipped due to not having enough memory, but the test hangs instead of exiting (presumably, since the printing already happened, process.exit() should have been called from common.skip())

For example: https://github.com/nodejs/reliability/blob/main/reports/2025-10-30.md

Reason	addons/stringbytes-external-exceed-max/test-stringbytes-external-exceed-max-by-1-utf8
Type	JS_TEST_FAILURE
Failed PR	5 (https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/60434/, https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/60388/, https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/60387/, https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/60380/, https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/60427/)
Appeared	test-osuosl-aix72-ppc64_be-4
First CI	https://ci.nodejs.org/job/node-test-pull-request/69907/
Last CI	https://ci.nodejs.org/job/node-test-pull-request/69949/

Example

not ok 4623 addons/stringbytes-external-exceed-max/test-stringbytes-external-exceed-max-by-1-utf8
  ---
  duration_ms: 120069.84700
  severity: fail
  exitcode: -15
  stack: |-
    timeout
    1..0 # Skipped: intensive toString tests due to memory confinements
  ...

cc @nodejs/platform-aix

[BharathPESU]

Hi — I’d like to work on this. I’ve reviewed the failure report and the example log where the test prints:

1..0 # Skipped: intensive toString tests due to memory confinements

but the process never exits (timeout/exitcode -15), so CI shows a hang rather than a clean skip.

What I suspect

common.skip() prints the skip message but the code path that should call process.exit() is not being reached under certain memory-constrained environments (AIX in the report).

The hang may be caused by a pending native addon operation / background worker that prevents Node from exiting, or by process.exit() being swallowed or deferred in the test harness on certain platforms.

Plan / next steps I’ll take

Reproduce the failure locally or on a similar CI image (target test-osuosl-aix72-ppc64_be if feasible) using the PRs listed in the reliability report.

Add diagnostic instrumentation around common.skip() and test teardown to confirm whether process.exit() is being called and whether there are pending handles (use process._getActiveHandles()/process._getActiveRequests() in a debug-only path).

Isolate whether the hang is caused by the test itself, the native addon (stringbytes-external), or the test harness on AIX. I’ll attempt a minimal reproducer that calls common.skip() and exits.

Propose either:

a small change to ensure process.exit() is called reliably in common.skip() paths on affected platforms, or

a test-side mitigation (explicit handle cleanup / forced exit) while we track down the root cause in the harness or addon.

Open a PR with the reproducer + a patch and CI showing the fix.

Notes / resources I’ll need from maintainers

If anyone has quick access to an AIX CI machine or can run a debug job with environment variables enabling --trace-exit/--inspect that would speed up root-cause analysis, that’d help.

Could you assign this to me? I’ll post updates and a minimal reproducer in the thread.

[joyeecheung]

I don't think it's possible to assign issues to people not in the github organization, but you can already work on it. For access to AIX I figured you'd help either from @nodejs/platform-aix or open an issue in https://github.com/nodejs/build/issues (although that reply looks pretty much like it's generated by AI and the account lacks accountability guarantees, so the build WG might hesitate in giving you access to the CI infra).