Meteor build running our of memory - node.js

Question

I'm trying to build my meteor app and am constantly running into the below error. This is not the first time I'm building the app and everything worked fine until yesterday's build. I already tried: as suggested in one of the answeres in [this SO post][1] but it did not help.
#!/usr/bin/env node --max_old_space_size=4096 --optimize_for_size --max_executable_size=4096 --stack_size=4096
Console output:
meteor build .
WARNING: The output directory is under your source tree.
Your generated files may get interpreted as source code!
Consider building into a different directory instead
meteor build ../output
Minifying app code \
<--- Last few GCs --->
103230 ms: Mark-sweep 1385.5 (1455.5) -> 1387.9 (1455.5) MB, 898.4 / 0 ms [allocation failure] [GC in old space requested].
104206 ms: Mark-sweep 1387.9 (1455.5) -> 1387.9 (1455.5) MB, 975.8 / 0 ms [allocation failure] [GC in old space requested].
105196 ms: Mark-sweep 1387.9 (1455.5) -> 1384.1 (1455.5) MB, 990.2 / 0 ms [last resort gc].
106101 ms: Mark-sweep 1384.1 (1455.5) -> 1385.1 (1455.5) MB, 905.3 / 0 ms [last resort gc].
<--- JS stacktrace --->
==== JS stack trace =========================================
Security context: 0x249f6fdb4629 <JS Object>
1: /* anonymous */(aka /* anonymous */) [0x249f6fd041b9 <undefined>:~4943] [pc=0xcd10dd2f48c] (this=0x249f6fd041b9 <undefined>,self=0x1400b413881 <an AST_ObjectKeyVal with map 0xc3d3a4651b9>,output=0x17417c4edd79 <an Object with map 0x16588927e021>)
2: doit(aka doit) [0x249f6fd041b9 <undefined>:4190] [pc=0xcd10d7a3298] (this=0x249f6fd041b9 <undefined>)
3: print [0x249f6fd041b9 <unde...
FATAL ERROR: CALL_AND_RETRY_LAST Allocation failed - process out of memory
Aborted (core dumped)

Answer 1

This same issue was driving me nuts, but I finally managed to resolve it under meteor 1.4.3.1.
Background:
The issue is that meteor calls node to build. When it runs, node allocates a certain amount of memory for the V8 engine it runs on. In bigger projects, the default memory allocated for V8 is not sufficient to keep track of everything - it tried to garbage-collect as it gets closer to the limit, but eventually runs out of space and crashes with the error shown.
If we were just running node directly, we could run it with the --max-old-space-size option, which would allow us to set the maximum memory for the V8 engine. The issue is that meteor calls node in its own context and with its own options, so we can't just add the flag directly to our meteor call.
Solution:
It appears that meteor 1.4.3.1 (and maybe others) will pass along flags and options specified in the TOOL_NODE_FLAGS environment variable when it calls node (others have mentioned NODE_OPTIONS, but it isn't working for my version of meteor - the flags just get dropped)
So if you want to increase the max memory of the node engine to 4 GB, add an environmental variable
TOOL_NODE_FLAGS="--max-old-space-size=4096"
to the context you are running meteor in - the option should be passed through to the node call.
(If you don't know where to set environment variables - it is usually going to be in your IDE build configuration or build script. If you want to sanity check if the --max-old... option is actually being read, try changing it to gibberish - it should cause meteor to throw an error)

Answer 2

You need to take notice of that initial warning:
WARNING: The output directory is under your source tree.
Your generated files may get interpreted as source code!
Consider building into a different directory instead
meteor build ../output
Read what it says - basically it will be producing files, and then compiling them in as well. No wonder it gets into trouble and runs out of memory. Put the build in a different directory (not within the Meteor project) and it should be a lot happier :)