René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"Migrating from object.ref()/object.unref() to process.ref()/process.unref()","articleBody":"Node.js has long had a pattern of attaching a `ref()` and `unref()` method to various i/o objects that are bound to the event loop. Calling `thing.unref()` makes it so the thing does not keep the event loop alive.\r\n\r\nFor instance,\r\n\r\n```js\r\nconst i = setInterval(() => {}, 1000);\r\ni.unref();\r\n```\r\n\r\nWhile this has worked effectively for Node.js specific APIs, it's rather cumbersome with web platform standard APIs. I'd like to propose a change: Introduce new `process.unref(thing)` and `process.ref(thing)` API that would accept multiple different kinds of ref'able types.\r\n\r\n```\r\nconst i = setInterval(() => {}, 1000);\r\nprocess.unref(i);\r\n// etc\r\n```\r\n\r\nA number of API objects that currently have `.ref()`/`.unref()` methods:\r\n\r\n* `dgram.Socket`\r\n* `net.Socket`\r\n* `net.Server`\r\n* `child_process.ChildProcess`\r\n* `child_process.Control`\r\n* `StatWatcher`\r\n* `FSWatcher`\r\n* `MessagePort`\r\n* `Timeout`\r\n* `Interval`\r\n* `Worker`\r\n* `Http2Session`\r\n* `BroadcastChannel`\r\n\r\nThe idea would be to mark the existing object-specific `ref()` and `unref()` methods as legacy and depend on the `process.ref()`/`process.unref()` as the supported mechanism moving forward.\r\n\r\n/cc @mcollina ","author":{"url":"https://github.com/jasnell","@type":"Person","name":"jasnell"},"datePublished":"2024-06-02T19:42:51Z","url":"https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/53266"}