events: make memory leak warning more accessible

This makes the famous `EventEmitter memory leak` warnings occurring
when the listener count for a given event exceeds a specified number
more programatically accessible, by giving them properties referring
to the event emitter instance and the event itself.

This can be useful for debugging the origins of such a warning when
the stack itself doesn’t reveal enough information about the event
emitter instance itself, e.g. when manual inspection of the
already-registered listeners is expected to be useful.

PR-URL: #8298
Reviewed-By: Colin Ihrig <[email protected]>
Reviewed-By: James M Snell <[email protected]>
Reviewed-By: Jeremiah Senkpiel <[email protected]>

Author: addaleax

doc/api/events.md

@@ -278,6 +278,14 @@ emitter.once('event', () => {
 });
 ```
 
+The [`--trace-warnings`][] command line flag can be used to display the
+stack trace for such warnings.
+
+The emitted warning can be inspected with [`process.on('warning')`][] and will
+have the additional `emitter`, `type` and `count` properties, referring to
+the event emitter instance, the event’s name and the number of attached
+listeners, respectively.
+
 ### emitter.addListener(eventName, listener)
 <!-- YAML
 added: v0.1.26
@@ -562,4 +570,6 @@ Returns a reference to the `EventEmitter`, so that calls can be chained.
 [`emitter.listenerCount()`]: #events_emitter_listenercount_eventname
 [`domain`]: domain.html
 [`process` object's `uncaughtException` event]: process.html#process_event_uncaughtexception
+[`process.on('warning')`]: process.html#process_event_warning
 [stream]: stream.html
+[`--trace-warnings`]: cli.html#cli_trace_warnings

lib/events.js

@@ -256,9 +256,14 @@ function _addListener(target, type, listener, prepend) {
       m = $getMaxListeners(target);
       if (m && m > 0 && existing.length > m) {
         existing.warned = true;
-        process.emitWarning('Possible EventEmitter memory leak detected. ' +
+        const w = new Error('Possible EventEmitter memory leak detected. ' +
                             `${existing.length} ${type} listeners added. ` +
                             'Use emitter.setMaxListeners() to increase limit');
+        w.name = 'Warning';
+        w.emitter = target;
+        w.type = type;
+        w.count = existing.length;
+        process.emitWarning(w);
       }
     }
   }

test/parallel/test-event-emitter-max-listeners-warning.js

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+// Flags: --no-warnings
+// The flag suppresses stderr output but the warning event will still emit
+'use strict';
+
+const common = require('../common');
+const events = require('events');
+const assert = require('assert');
+
+const e = new events.EventEmitter();
+e.setMaxListeners(1);
+
+process.on('warning', common.mustCall((warning) => {
+  assert.ok(warning instanceof Error);
+  assert.strictEqual(warning.name, 'Warning');
+  assert.strictEqual(warning.emitter, e);
+  assert.strictEqual(warning.count, 2);
+  assert.strictEqual(warning.type, 'event-type');
+}));
+
+e.on('event-type', function() {});
+e.on('event-type', function() {});