JavaScript heap out of memory

I’m running into the following issue when synthesizing an app that has stacks in many regions:

FATAL ERROR: CALL_AND_RETRY_LAST Allocation failed - JavaScript heap out of memory
   1: node::Abort() [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
   2: node::FatalException(v8::Isolate*, v8::Local<v8::Value>, v8::Local<v8::Message>) [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
   3: v8::Utils::ReportOOMFailure(char const*, bool) [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
   4: v8::internal::V8::FatalProcessOutOfMemory(char const*, bool) [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
   5: v8::internal::Factory::NewRawTwoByteString(int, v8::internal::PretenureFlag) [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
   6: v8::internal::String::SlowFlatten(v8::internal::Handle<v8::internal::ConsString>, v8::internal::PretenureFlag) [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
   7: v8::String::WriteUtf8(char*, int, int*, int) const [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
   8: node::StringBytes::Write(v8::Isolate*, char*, unsigned long, v8::Local<v8::Value>, node::encoding, int*) [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
   9: node::Buffer::New(v8::Isolate*, v8::Local<v8::String>, node::encoding) [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
  10: node::Buffer::(anonymous namespace)::CreateFromString(v8::FunctionCallbackInfo<v8::Value> const&) [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
  11: v8::internal::FunctionCallbackArguments::Call(void (*)(v8::FunctionCallbackInfo<v8::Value> const&)) [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
  12: v8::internal::MaybeHandle<v8::internal::Object> v8::internal::(anonymous namespace)::HandleApiCallHelper<false>(v8::internal::Isolate*, v8::internal::Handle<v8::internal::HeapObject>, v8::internal::Handle<v8::internal::HeapObject>, v8::internal::Handle<v8::internal::FunctionTemplateInfo>, v8::internal::Handle<v8::internal::Object>, v8::internal::BuiltinArguments) [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
  13: v8::internal::Builtin_Impl_HandleApiCall(v8::internal::BuiltinArguments, v8::internal::Isolate*) [/usr/local/Cellar/node@8/8.16.0/bin/node]
  14: 0x131f3a6842fd
  15: 0x131f3a73edb6

<--- Last few GCs --->
  
  [52557:0x104001a00]    65671 ms: Mark-sweep 1078.2 (1204.6) -> 1077.9 (1208.6) MB, 189.6 / 0.0 ms  allocation failure GC in old space requested
  [52557:0x104001a00]    65891 ms: Mark-sweep 1077.9 (1208.6) -> 1077.9 (1172.1) MB, 219.6 / 0.0 ms  last resort GC in old space requested
  [52557:0x104001a00]    66104 ms: Mark-sweep 1077.9 (1172.1) -> 1077.9 (1167.6) MB, 213.3 / 0.0 ms  last resort GC in old space requested
  
  
  <--- JS stacktrace --->
  
  ==== JS stack trace =========================================
  
  Security context: 0x150ee2725891 <JSObject>
      1: fromString(aka fromString) [buffer.js:314] [bytecode=0x150e49bdf279 offset=164](this=0x150e69b022d1 <undefined>,string=0x150e2480b949 <Very long string[172886547]>,encoding=0x150ee2735b29 <String[4]: utf8>)
      2: from [buffer.js:177] [bytecode=0x150e49b99c09 offset=11](this=0x150e71b35dd9 <JSFunction Buffer (sfi = 0x150ee277e529)>,value=0x150e2480b949 <Very long string[172886547]>,encodi...
  

Is it possible to configure the memory allocated to Node?

Additionally, the above exception is not surfaced appropriately to the end user. This is what I saw:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
        at software.amazon.jsii.JsiiRuntime.requestResponse(JsiiRuntime.java:83)
        at software.amazon.jsii.JsiiClient.callMethod(JsiiClient.java:185)
        at software.amazon.jsii.JsiiObject.jsiiCall(JsiiObject.java:57)
        at software.amazon.awscdk.core.App.synth(App.java:65)

From there, I had to debug JsiiRuntime to get the stderr and stdout to find this error.

[jeshan]

I got the memory issue from Python. The workaround works fine but it’s not going to scale since we may hit the limit again later.

For my case, I have 4 top-level stacks, each of which nests a vpc stack. They share most of my ~12 constructs. My estimated resource count across all of them is 297. They are all in the same account in different regions.

[github-actions[bot]]

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