René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"child_process: timeout option never clears on spawn-time failure (ENOENT etc), hangs process for full timeoutMs","articleBody":"### Version\n\nv24.5.0\n\n### Platform\n\nMicrosoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64\n\n### Subsystem\n\nchild_process\n\n### What steps will reproduce the bug?\n\n```js\nconst {spawn} = require('child_process');\nconst start = Date.now();\nconst child = spawn('node', ['--version'], {cwd: 'Z:\\\\nope', timeout: 5000});\nchild.on('error', e => console.log('error', Date.now() - start, e.code));\nprocess.on('exit', () => console.log('exiting', Date.now() - start));\n```\n\n### How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?\n\nAlways, with `timeout` set and a spawn that fails at the OS level (ENOENT here).\n\n### What is the expected behavior? Why is that the expected behavior?\n\nProcess exits within a few ms of `error`.\n\n### What do you see instead?\n\n```\nerror 12 ENOENT\nexiting 5026\n```\n\nHangs until `timeout` elapses.\n\n### Additional information\n\n`timeout`'s only cleanup is `child.once('exit', clearTimeout)`. On a spawn-time failure `onexit` gets `exitCode \u003c 0` and emits `error`, not `exit` — so the timer never clears. `unref()` doesn't help either.\n\nNo existing issue found for this exact case (#43704, #51561 are different). Fix: clear the timer on `error` too, or use `close` instead of `exit`. Can PR once there's a preferred direction.\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/kishore280","@type":"Person","name":"kishore280"},"datePublished":"2026-08-23T17:05:19Z","url":"https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/65504"}