Regression 25.2.0 - Cannot initialize local storage without a `--localstorage-file` path

[alexander-akait]

Version

25.2.0

Platform

any

Subsystem

No response

What steps will reproduce the bug?

Touching localStorage global variable produce the problem

Ref: webpack/webpack#20119 (we fixed this, but jest is broken)
Ref: jestjs/jest#15888 (jest issue)

Another ref where logic is broken - jantimon/html-webpack-plugin#1880

And more

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

Always

What is the expected behavior? Why is that the expected behavior?

No warning

What do you see instead?

Any workarounds

Additional information

No response

[alexander-akait]

Code to reproduce:

const myVars = Object.keys(globalThis);

for (const item of myVars) {
	console.log(globalThis[item]);
}

Very often you need to run through all global variables, especial in tools like testing frameworks/bundlers/etc, so it should not throw an error when you touch this

[slorber]

This also broke Docusaurus production builds: facebook/docusaurus#11545

The production build issue is caused by this npm "eval" lib we use (1m download, but legacy/archived and won't be patched): https://github.com/pierrec/node-eval/blob/master/eval.js

This also broke our dev server through html-webpack-plugin: jantimon/html-webpack-plugin#1880

[Renegade334]

Very often you need to run through all global variables, especial in tools like testing frameworks/bundlers/etc, so it should not throw an error when you touch this

The core assumption that enumerating the global object should never raise an exception, or that it should be side-effect-free at all, is not a valid one. This action would already throw in Node.js >=19 in builds without crypto support, and can definitely throw in browser environments. (Indeed, it also throws in Node.js <=24 if experimental local storage is enabled.)

I would have preferred this change to land in a major release for sure.

Ditto, although it was technically an "unchange" – the specification-compliant throw-on-access behaviour existed in v24, albeit behind a flag.

[alexander-akait]

@Renegade334 I am not against such changes, but this is definitely a breaking change for this release, as you can see many well-known packages are broken...

[aduh95]

Consider passing --no-experimental-webstorage as a flag or in your NODE_OPTIONS to unblock yourself if you're not using localStorage.

[Xe]

This bit us when building Docusaurus in Anubis

[cjihrig]

Given the breakage, it seems like #60351 should be reverted and the less severe bug it addressed (#60303) can be revisited.

[slorber]

Made my argument here to motivate a revert: #60351 (comment)

TLDR:

• the web spec behavior is questionable and probably historical
• server runtimes !== web
• Deno doesn't throw by default
• this should probably be discussed in TC55 (Winter TC) to align the behavior of server runtimes