IPC between Node <= 10.5.0 and Node 10.6.0 crashes

[ventsislav-georgiev]

• Version: 10.6.0
• Platform: Windows x64

Running Node 10.5.0 to spawn a process with Node 10.6.0 and send IPC messages from the child crashes the parent.

Related issue in the Electron repo: electron/electron#13565

Code to reproduce
parent.js (run with node_v10.5.0)

const path = require('path');
const spawn = require('child_process').spawn;

const node10_6 = "C:/nvm/v10.6.0/node.exe";
const childPath = path.resolve('./child.js');

const child = spawn(node10_6, [childPath], {
  stdio: [ 'ignore', 'ignore', 'ignore', 'ipc' ]
});

child.on('message', message => {
  console.log(JSON.stringify(message));
  if (message.exit) process.exit(0);
});

child.send({ msg: "parent->child" });

child.js

process.send({ msg: "child->parent" });
process.on('message', message => {
    process.send({ msg: `from-parent: ${JSON.stringify(message)}` });
    process.send({ exit: true });
});

Result
The parent process crashes with:
Assertion failed: handle->pipe.conn.remaining_ipc_rawdata_bytes >= bytes, file src\win\pipe.c, line 1666

[cjihrig]

From a quick glance, based on the assertion location, I'm going to guess the failed assertion comes from libuv/libuv@4e53af9 in the libuv 1.21.0 update.

[bzoz]

Yep, it is caused by libuv/libuv#1843. It also does not matter if parent is 10.5.0 or 10.6.0.

[joaocgreis]

@nodejs/lts this should block updating libuv in LTS releases. This is already fixed in libuv (libuv/libuv#1923), but a new version still needs to be released and node updated.

libuv issue: libuv/libuv#1922