process.title value is not respected on macOS (14.x.x+)

[coreybutler]

• Version: 14.0.0+
• Platform: macOS
• Subsystem: process

What steps will reproduce the bug?

process.title = "test"

How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?

This appears in all 14.x.x releases. It does not appear in 13.x.x (I tested with 13.5.0)

What is the expected behavior?

The process name should be test, which is typically reflected in the Activity Monitor on macOS.

What do you see instead?

The process name is always node

Additional information

This appears to be a regression of #28945.

[devsnek]

The name is changed (you can verify with ps, top, htop, etc) but activity monitor won't show the change. If you want activity monitor to reflect the change you have to use internal apple api hackery (or shell out to lsappinfo)

[coreybutler]

@devsnek ah yes, I do see it with ps in 14.x.x.

It seems to me that the most common process display tools (like Activity Monitor) should either be supported in Node, or the documentation should have a note to help folks understand why it doesn't display, especially since there are differences between Node releases.

Just for reference, node-mac has pretty much "just worked" in Activity Monitor for several years using process.title=.... Only recently have I seen users submitting issues about not being able to find their process in tools like Activity Monitor. Point: something has obviously changed (again). That's fine as long as there is some reference to the change.

I can close this issue and open a documentation issue instead, if documentation is a better direction.

[bnoordhuis]

Platform: macOS

Can you post the output of uname -a? It might be relevant.

FWIW, I'm fairly sure certain changes in libuv are responsible, probably libuv/libuv@6e3e422c. If that's the case it's trading a minor regression for a big one and this is the new status quo unless someone figures out a workaround.

[coreybutler]

uname -a output:

Darwin iMac.local 19.5.0 Darwin Kernel Version 19.5.0: Thu Apr 30 18:25:59 PDT 2020; root:xnu-6153.121.1~7/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

[devsnek]

fwiw i don't observe any version of node (10 through 14) changing the title in activity monitor.

[bnoordhuis]

Libuv's Activity Monitor integration was last tested on macos 10.14. Apple has a habit of breaking the interface with every new release so it's quite possible that it no longer works.

I'm not planning to investigate and I'm reluctant to take patches because every change to that subsystem seems to cause regressions, just check out git log src/unix/darwin-proctitle.c.

[coreybutler]

Given the history and the unstable nature of Apple's releases, perhaps it's better to just document/cite this as a known behavior and move on. Thoughts?

[bnoordhuis]

@coreybutler Sounds reasonable. Want to open a PR?

[coreybutler]

Yeah, I can do that.