require() of malformed script uncatchably crashes the process

[broofa]

Acknowledgements

• I searched existing issues before opening this one to avoid duplicates
• I understand this is not a place for seek help, but to report a bug
• I understand that the bug must be proven first with a minimal reproduction
• I will be polite, respectful, and considerate of people's time and effort

Minimal reproduction URL

https://stackblitz.com/edit/stackblitz-starters-xedxss?file=load.mjs

Version

4.7.1

Node.js version

18.18.0

Package manager

npm

Operating system

Linux

Problem & Expected behavior

• What happened?

See the attached stackblitz MRE.

Basically I'm trying to require() user-supplied code that may be malformed. This causes the tsx process to die immediately. There appears to be no way of preventing this. (try-catch, uncaughtException event, and unhandledPromise event are all ineffective.)

You can see this by running npm start:

❯ npm start

> start
> tsx load.mjs

STARTING ...

[esbuild Error]: Expected "}" but found end of file
    at /home/projects/stackblitz-starters-xedxss/foo.js:1:67

~/projects/stackblitz-starters-xedxss
❯ 

• What did you expect instead?

require()'ing a module should behave similar to how running this directly in node works. E.g. node load.mjs produces the following...

❯ node load.mjs
STARTING ...

CATCH Unexpected token 'export'
FINALLY

... AND SETTLED

~/projects/stackblitz-starters-xedxss
❯ 

In other words ...

1. Process should not die.
2. Control should always return to the routine calling require().
3. Any/all errors (e.g. from esbuild) should be catch-able by the calling routine

• Do you have ... ?

Note: Possibly related to issue #472, but as you noted the description there is a bit vague. Maybe this issue will help?

Contributions

• I plan to open a pull request for this issue
• I plan to make a financial contribution to this project

[wesbos]

Yep, node.js dynamic import or require can be caught, but tsx cannot.

try {
  const x = await import(`./file-with-syntax-error.js`);
  console.log(x);
} catch (e) {
  console.log(`caught error in try/catch block`);
  console.error(e);
}

Change the .js file with a .ts and you'll see the issue.

Right now my whole dev experience breaks with a syntax error and I have to a non-ignored file and save it to restart the process.

[privatenumber]

Fixed in https://github.com/pvtnbr/tsx/pull/7

[privatenumber]

Released in https://github.com/privatenumber/tsx/releases/tag/v4.8.1