Ava is unable to run when NODE_OPTIONS=--use-openssl-ca is used globally.

[Jym77]

My company is having some network proxy/firewall with an OpenSSL certificate. In order to tell node to use it, for example for downloading packages, I'm having a

export NODE_OPTIONS=--use-openssl-ca

in my global shell config files, which works fine.

But when I try to run Ava, I now get the following error:

 ✘ Internal error
  Error [ERR_WORKER_INVALID_EXEC_ARGV]: Initiated Worker with invalid NODE_OPTIONS env variable: --use-openssl-ca is not allowed in NODE_OPTIONS
  Error [ERR_WORKER_INVALID_EXEC_ARGV]: Initiated Worker with invalid NODE_OPTIONS env variable: --use-openssl-ca is not allowed in NODE_OPTIONS
      at new NodeError (node:internal/errors:371:5)
      at new Worker (node:internal/worker:194:13)
      at createWorker (file:///c/Projects/a11y/alfa-act-r/node_modules/ava/lib/fork.js:24:12)
      at loadFork (file:///c/Projects/a11y/alfa-act-r/node_modules/ava/lib/fork.js:84:39)
      at pMap.concurrency.concurrency (file:///c/Projects/a11y/alfa-act-r/node_modules/ava/lib/api.js:289:20)
      at file:///c/Projects/a11y/alfa-act-r/node_modules/p-map/index.js:141:26
      at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:96:5)

Removing the option from NODE_OPTIONS let it work fine.

Given the error message and a tiny bit of digging, I believe this is similar to parcel-bundler/parcel#6569
Sounds like a worker is forked with the global NODE_OPTIONS being forwarded, but in a context where --use-openssl-ca makes no sense.

My current workaround is to have two terminals open, one with the option set to install packages or any other task requiring network access in node, and another one with the option unset to run Ava 🙈

---

Please share relevant sample code. Or better yet, provide a link to a minimal reproducible example.

This happens in This public repo when running yarn test (after yarn install and yarn build), and the NODE_OPTIONS=--use-openssl-ca is set.
Sorry I'm not having time to build a better MNWE right now 😕

---

We'll also need your AVA configuration (in package.json or ava.config.* configuration files) and how you're invoking AVA. Share the installed AVA version (get it by running npx ava --version).

Ava version 5.1.0 (was also here with 4.3.1),

"ava": {
    "verbose": true,
    "files": [
      "test/**/*.spec.js"
    ]
  },

[novemberborn]

You can set "workerThreads": "false" in the AVA config, this should work with child processes. Perhaps setting "environmentVariables": { "NODE_OPTIONS": "" } could also work, to override them for the worker threads.

[Jym77]

workerThreads didn't work for me, but using environmentVariables to overwrite NODE_OPTIONS did the trick 👍