Invalid string length

[simplychaos]

Just got this error randomly after using hard-source-webpack-plugin for a few days:

RangeError: Invalid string length
    at formatError (/myproject/node_modules/webpack/lib/Stats.js:221:30)
    at Array.map (<anonymous>)
    at Stats.toJson (/myproject/node_modules/webpack/lib/Stats.js:229:56)
    at Compiler.<anonymous> (/myproject/node_modules/html-webpack-plugin/index.js:68:44)
    at Compiler.applyPluginsAsyncSeries (/myproject/node_modules/tapable/lib/Tapable.js:206:13)
    at Compiler.emitAssets (/myproject/node_modules/webpack/lib/Compiler.js:354:8)
    at onCompiled (/myproject/node_modules/webpack/lib/Compiler.js:58:19)
    at applyPluginsAsync.err (/myproject/node_modules/webpack/lib/Compiler.js:510:14)
    at next (/myproject/node_modules/tapable/lib/Tapable.js:202:11)
    at Compiler.<anonymous> (/myproject/node_modules/webpack/lib/CachePlugin.js:78:5)
    at next (/myproject/node_modules/tapable/lib/Tapable.js:204:14)
    at /myproject/node_modules/hard-source-webpack-plugin/index.js:2062:7
    at <anonymous>

[DerJacques]

We have started experiencing the exact same issue. The "Invalid string length" error seems to actually mean that node ran out of memory.

Broad overview of our setup: Webpack (^3.11.0), Awesome TS-loader (^4.0.1), React (^16.3.2)

Here's what we've found so far:

1. The error tends to not appear on an initial build with webpack, but primarily after saving changes when running webpack in watch mode.
2. The error does not always occur, but about 70% of the time
3. The error appears at the very end of webpack's bundling step: Asset optimization
4. Webpack is stuck on "Asset optimization" for about 30 seconds before the error appears.

[pawelkondraciuk]

Can confirm

"react": "^15.3.2",
"hard-source-webpack-plugin": "^0.5.18",
"webpack": "^3.10.0",

[mzgoddard]

@pawelkondraciuk @DerJacques Are you getting the EXACT SAME error? This is a common symptom for hard-source but with an endless number of causes from other plugins, loaders, es2015 module syntax in specific npm packages, etc. If you have a different error please open a separate issue.

If you're getting the same issue, if any of you can create a reproduction project that would be really helpful.

TLDR of the symptom, something being stringified is trying to make a string larger than ~130MB (javascript implementation detail for node/v8). A previous example of the bug was webpack dependencies that created a tree that refered to each non-recursively to the point that what was <1MB in memory grew past the string limit when stringified because stringifing doesn't remove duplicate memory values.

[mzgoddard]

The example I'm mentioning was caused by a deeply nested npm dependency in another user's project. Its hard to find the causes for this symptom without a reproduction project.