Wait for message from parent before closing

[ORESoftware]

I am on Node.js version 6-8

I have a child process file with this in it:

process.on('message', function(){

});

this process seems to shut down as soon as I start it.

Now if I add a setTimeout to it:

process.on('message', function(){

});

setTimeout(function(){

   console.log('timed out');

},3000);

then the process will close only after the timeout.

I swear it wasn't like this before. It was working with just process.on('message'). Did something with Node.js change with newer versions?

Anyway how can I wait for a message from the parent process before closing? One would think process.on('message') would keep the process open until the listener was removed -or- process.exit() is called, etc.

[ORESoftware]

LOL I know what's going on...I changed from 'fork' to 'spawn' and an IPC channel is not there by default.

I would recommend to the Node.js authors - please throw / log an error if process.on('message') is registered for a node.js process that does not have an IPC channel ?

[GlenTiki]

process is an EventEmitter, so it could be used in weird and funky ways to pass a 'message' event around. It would be unwise to throw when listening for a specific event on an EventEmitter when you don't know how users make use of them.

[refack]

I smell a deprecation of message in favor of an IPCMessage coming soon... 👃

[ORESoftware]

@refack thanks for the 🗣 heads up :)