Setting max-old-space-size in Azure DevOps pipeline - node.js

Question

My "IIS Web App Deploy" starts failing to deploy zip package when its size exceeded 200MB. The error is FATAL ERROR: CALL_AND_RETRY_LAST Allocation failed - JavaScript heap out of memory
The solution must be to increase node memory with max-old-space-size option e.g. [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("NODE_OPTIONS", "--max-old-space-size=16384", "Machine")
However, whatever I do does not help. Always the same error. I tried setting env variable and can confirm that it changes (I check env variables via My computer on Windows). I also tried set NODE_OPTIONS=--max_old_space_size=8192 but IIS Web App Deploy task always fails with the same error message.
I added a Power Shell script to check node memory size with simple js script
const v8 = require('v8');
const totalHeapSize = v8.getHeapStatistics().total_available_size;
const totalHeapSizeGb = (totalHeapSize / 1024 / 1024 / 1024).toFixed(2);
console.log('totalHeapSizeGb: ', totalHeapSizeGb);
and if I run this script locally it shows amended size but if I run it as a task in the pipeline it ways shows default totalHeapSizeGb: 1.39
My question is How to change max-old-space-size for node so IIS Web App Deploy task use it instead of default value and stops failing?

Answer 1

increase-memory-limit is a workaround to fix heap out of memory when running node binaries. It's a common issue when using TypeScript 2.1+ and webpack.
How to use
npm install -g increase-memory-limit
Run from the root location of your project:
increase-memory-limit
Running from NPM task
Alternatively, you can configure a npm task to run the fix
// ...
"scripts": {
"fix-memory-limit": "cross-env LIMIT=2048 increase-memory-limit"
},
"devDependencies": {
"increase-memory-limit": "^1.0.3",
"cross-env": "^5.0.5"
}
// ...
npm run fix-memory-limit
Here is the document you can refer to.