react-native: Cannot assign to read only property 'performance' of object '[object global]'

The problem is in node version indeed. I was using stable node version on my project and I had node installed with homebrew (that is system node version). NVM prioritizes system-node over default alias, so jest was using node v19 that triggers this error. I had to remove system node version. Now jest is running on stable node version

FIX: brew uninstall node nvm use stable

solved in jest 29.6.4 version

For me this is still not being solved, using jest 29.7.0

I got this error after upgrading to node v19. Changing these lines https://github.com/facebook/react-native/blob/473eb1dd870a4f62c4ebcba27e12bde1e99e3d07/jest/setup.js#L20-L22 to something like

if (!global.performance) {
  global.performance = {}
}
global.performance.now = jest.fn(Date.now)

Might solve the issue. I’m guessing that node v18/19 started defining performance or added a guard that prevents reassigning it. Couldn’t find anything related in the release notes though.

Hello.

I encountered this error when running Jest in a Node.js project (not a React Native project).

If the issue is that the global object’s performance is read-only, it seems like the following explicit declaration could resolve it (at least it worked for me). However, is there anything problematic with this?

Object.defineProperty(global, "performance", {
  writable: true,
});

(Admittedly, modifying the global object easily may not be a good practice.)

Worth linking this here: https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/51048 (this same issue being reported directly to Node).

I’ve run into this on a project using Jest and this is the only issue I could find with the exact error I was seeing - it broke between node 18.18 and 18.19 - Jest relies on descriptor.writable but it’s not longer returned in the descriptor:

$ docker run --rm -it node:18.18 node 
Welcome to Node.js v18.18.2.
Type ".help" for more information.
> Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(globalThis, 'performance');
{
  value: Performance {
    nodeTiming: PerformanceNodeTiming {
      name: 'node',
      entryType: 'node',
      startTime: 0,
      duration: 1273.0532480003312,
      nodeStart: 1.4266739999875426,
      v8Start: 6.116002000402659,
      bootstrapComplete: 25.822167000267655,
      environment: 13.395024999976158,
      loopStart: 42.115690000355244,
      loopExit: -1,
      idleTime: 1205.711491
    },
    timeOrigin: 1701690439884.343
  },
  writable: true,
  enumerable: true,
  configurable: true
}

$ docker run --rm -it node:18.19 node
Welcome to Node.js v18.19.0.
Type ".help" for more information.
> Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(globalThis, 'performance');
{
  get: [Function: get performance],
  set: [Function: set performance],
  enumerable: true,
  configurable: true
}

Hello. I encountered this error when running Jest in a Node.js project (not a React Native project). If the issue is that the global object’s performance is read-only, it seems like the following explicit declaration could resolve it (at least it worked for me). However, is there anything problematic with this?

Object.defineProperty(global, "performance", {
  writable: true,
});

(Admittedly, modifying the global object easily may not be a good practice.)

@manattan where did you put it?

I ended up with this patch in react-native/jest/setup.js:

Replaced this code

...
global.performance = {
    now: jest.fn(Date.now),
};

with this code

...
Object.defineProperty(global, "performance", {
  writable: true,
});
...

Node: 21.5.0 Jest: 29.7.0 React Native: 0.71.13

UPDATE:

My initial patch caused a different error on some machines

TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'now')

So I (with the help of ChatGPT) refactored the code to

const performanceDescriptor = Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(global, 'performance');
if (!performanceDescriptor || performanceDescriptor.configurable) {
  Object.defineProperty(global, 'performance', {
    value: {
      now: jest.fn(Date.now),
    },
    writable: true,
  });
} else {
  global.performance.now = jest.fn(Date.now);
}

which seems to be working fine on all machines with this setup: Node: 21.5.0 Jest: 29.7.0 React Native: 0.71.13

solved in jest 29.6.4 version