jest: --watch Now Throws an Error

🐛 Bug Report

I recently updated jest to 24.3.1 and now running with --watch throws an error and does not start. The error is:

2019-03-08 09:51 node[1373] (FSEvents.framework) FSEventStreamStart: register_with_server: ERROR: f2d_register_rpc() => (null) (-22)
Error: Error watching file for changes: EMFILE
    at _errnoException (util.js:1022:11)
    at FSEvent.FSWatcher._handle.onchange (fs.js:1359:9)

I do not have watchman installed globally and again, this was working yesterday and now it’s not. I feel like it’s an issue with the macOS update but I can’t confirm. I know installing watchman via brew is a suggested solution but I’ve never had to do that before and that seems kind of like it’s masking a possible issue with jest.

To Reproduce

npx jest --watch

Expected behavior

I expected jest to continue to work correctly as it has before I updated.

Link to repl or repo (highly encouraged)

https://github.com/arb/celebrate/tree/feature-ref this is the branch I’m working with and currently exhibiting the above behavior.

Run `npx envinfo --preset jest`

Paste the results here:

npx: installed 1 in 1.538s

  System:
    OS: macOS 10.14.3
    CPU: (8) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7820HQ CPU @ 2.90GHz
  Binaries:
    Node: 8.11.1 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v8.11.1/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.9.4 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v8.11.1/bin/yarn
    npm: 5.6.0 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v8.11.1/bin/npm
  npmPackages:
    jest: ^24.3.1 => 24.3.1

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 5 years ago
Reactions: 6
Comments: 37 (14 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

I was able to alleviate the issue in my project that is experiencing this by configuring the watchPathIgnorePatterns to ["node_modules"]. As expected, this lowered the number of files being watched to something below my system’s limit.

https://jestjs.io/docs/en/configuration.html#watchpathignorepatterns-array-string

+20

elkwood on Mar 14, 2019

I confirm that ignoring the node_modules worked again:

{
  "watchPathIgnorePatterns": ["node_modules"]
}

jest@24.8.0 doesn’t solve the issue for me 😕

+12

normancarcamo on Jun 16, 2019

Seems this is still an issue for folks

SimenB on Mar 12, 2019

Fix out in 24.7.0

SimenB on Apr 3, 2019

It is, yes. Jest 23 worked fine. As soon as I updated to Jest 24 24.4.0 it started breaking.

yoshicarroll on Mar 12, 2019

People get upset when we aren’t watching node_modules because people tend to change them manually.

cpojer on Apr 2, 2019

I had issue I see here using jest and the only way I could fix that was installing watchman. Here my environment:

System:
    OS: macOS 10.14.3
    CPU: (8) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8559U CPU @ 2.70GHz
  Binaries:
    Node: 11.12.0 - /usr/local/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.15.2 - /usr/local/bin/yarn
    npm: 6.7.0 - /usr/local/bin/npm
  npmPackages:
    jest: ^24.5.0 => 24.5.0

If now is necessary we install watchman to run jest, why that information isn’t in Jest website (or documentation)? I needed to do a long research till I get here. Including that information into Jest page installation instruction would make jest user’s life a lot easier.

Why not just include this information somewhere in Jest website?

brneto on Mar 26, 2019

Problem still exists in jest@24.9.0 but configuring watchPathIgnorePatterns to ignore node_modules does fix.

jeffbski-rga on Oct 31, 2019

@elkwood Yeah, going with an alternate solution (see https://github.com/facebook/jest/pull/8258), may revisit defaults on watching node_modules in the future if have more issues in this area.

scotthovestadt on Apr 2, 2019

Or just a shallow watch of the folder, which would be nice because it would catch new modules. I’ll take a look today.

scotthovestadt on Apr 2, 2019

I’m learning react and I was testing redux actions, I installed es-lint to project (for no reason) and start getting the same error. Deleted node-modules and removed es-lint from the project. Everything went back to normal. I don’t think this information helps you at all 😃, but just wanted to let you know es-lint might be part of the issue as well for you guys too.

BoraALAP on Mar 27, 2019

This workaround resolves the errors for me as well, thanks @elkwood. And, like @arb I too believe a code fix should fix the underlying issue.

yoshicarroll on Mar 15, 2019

Can confirm this workaround gets around the problem. Make sure you specify the value on the project config if you’re using multiple projects. I still believe there needs to be a code fix for this as it was working in version 23, but this is a good workaround for the current problem! 👍

arb on Mar 15, 2019

Sure, I was just trying to unblock you

SimenB on Mar 8, 2019

You can probably install watchman to get around this - brew install watchman.

This is probably because we removed the fsevents crawler (#8048). Not sure why the node crawler explodes, tho.