devtools-vite: source injection silently yields zero data-tsd-source attributes (AST child-key cache poisoned by regex literals)

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
74/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
devtools, typescript, vite

Research direction

Start with the AST traversal in @tanstack/devtools-bundler-core's ast-utils.js and the addSourceToJsx entry point. Run the two-process minimal reproduction, first confirming that a regex literal poisons later string literals. Done means source injection still adds data-tsd-source attributes after regex files are processed and failures are no longer silently invisible.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

TanStack Devtools version
  • @tanstack/devtools-vite@0.8.5
  • transitive @tanstack/devtools-bundler-core@0.1.3
  • @tanstack/react-devtools@0.10.12 (transitive @tanstack/devtools@0.14.2)
  • Vite 8.2.2, Astro 7.2.9 (Astro drives Vite here; I could not reproduce with plain Vite)
  • Node 26.7.0, Linux
Describe the bug and the steps to reproduce it

The "Go to Source" / source inspector feature injects zero data-tsd-source
attributes. There is no browser console warning and nothing in the Vite dev
server log, so the feature just silently does nothing.

Root cause, from reading @tanstack/devtools-bundler-core/dist/esm/ast-utils.js.
getChildKeys(node) memoises the child-bearing keys of each AST node type in a
module-level childKeysCache Map, seeded from the first instance of that
type it ever sees:

for (const key in node) {
  if (key === "type" || key === "start" || key === "end") continue;
  if (typeof node[key] === "object") keys.push(key);
}

A regex literal (/abc/g) is an oxc Literal whose value is an object, so
value is cached as a child key for the type Literal. Every subsequent
string Literal then reaches:

} else if ("type" in value) callback(value);

with value being a string, and throws:

TypeError: Cannot use 'in' operator to search for 'type' in use client
    at forEachChild (.../@tanstack/devtools-bundler-core/dist/esm/ast-utils.js:31:21)

"use client" is simply the first string literal in that particular file; the
throw happens for any string literal. addSourceToJsx() wraps its whole body in
try { ... } catch (e) { return; }, so the TypeError is swallowed and the
function returns undefined — no attributes, no log, no warning.

Because the cache is module-level and shared across every file and every call,
a single regex literal anywhere in the module graph disables source injection
for every string literal parsed afterwards. That is why this reproduces in a
real dev server but not in an isolated unit test.

Minimal reproduction

Two separate node processes, same target file (any .tsx file with JSX):

import { addSourceToJsx } from '@tanstack/devtools-bundler-core'

// Case A — fresh cache: works
addSourceToJsx(heroCode, heroPath, {})   // -> transformed, N attributes injected

// Case B — parse a regex literal first, then the same file: returns undefined
addSourceToJsx('const r = /abc/g;\nexport default r;\n', regexPath, {})
addSourceToJsx(heroCode, heroPath, {})   // -> undefined

Run the two cases in separate processes. Case A injects the attributes,
Case B returns undefined.

Observed in a real app: a component that reported 36 injected attributes in
isolation injected 0 once the dev server had processed the rest of the graph.

Expected behavior

Source injection should not depend on which files were parsed earlier. And a
failure inside addSourceToJsx should at least be logged rather than swallowed,
so the feature cannot fail completely silently.

Suggested fix

Guard the non-array branch the same way the array branch already is:

- } else if ("type" in value) callback(value);
+ } else if (typeof value === "object" && "type" in value) callback(value);

With that guard, Case B injects the attributes again. A more thorough fix would
make getChildKeys key the cache on the shape of the node (or only record
keys whose value is a node or an array of nodes) and drop the bare catch.

I am carrying this as a local patch-package patch for now.

Do you intend to try to help solve this bug with your own PR?

Maybe, I'll investigate and start debugging

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  • I understand that if my bug cannot be reliably reproduced in a debuggable environment, it will probably not get fixed and this issue may even be closed.
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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