Access time updates triggering restarts in watch mode?

[elieux]

Hi. I'm aware this might be a bit low-effort report at the moment, but we're encountering a problem with node --test on Windows and it'd be nice to get some input on it.

The problem is that sometimes there's an interval of frequent (nearly constant) restarts triggered without the user changing any files. It often reports files in node_modules (but the user's not running npm or anything like that). Usually the project is also open in VS Code at the time but we don't know if it's necessarily related. After a while it settles down and stops happening but comes back later. We're trying it now with fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1 and it seems to be helping but it's too soon to tell for sure.

[inoway46]

Yes, access-time updates can trigger reruns. On Windows, libuv watches for access-time changes, and Node.js watch mode does not distinguish those notifications from content changes.

A similar problem was reported in #50920. Narrowing the watched events was discussed in libuv/libuv#3403, but the change was declined due to compatibility concerns.

@elieux To check whether this is the same cause, could you share your Node.js version and exact command, and check whether a file triggering a rerun has a changed access time but an unchanged modification time?