There needs to be a this.destroy

[Deleted user]

There has to be a this.destroy() that releases all the functions in a step, otherwise there is a memory leak in the case of any error or in the case that a function wants to exit without completing the steps.

Simple leak case:

step(function(){ return; }, function(){ });

2nd function is leaked. The 1st should be allowed to call this.destroy() before returning.

[alexanderdean]

This would be great. Without this, I don't see a safe way of halting a Step flow in the case of e.g. a validation error.

[cortesi]

I've tried a variety of early termination scenarios (including the one given by cwolves), and I can't trigger a memory leak. If this bug report is accurate it's a fatal shortcoming - any of you chaps have more information or a reproducible error case?

[Deleted user]

I realized a little while ago that this isn't nearly as important in Node.js as it is in most browsers since V8 caches identical functions. So the only leak is the object literal that represents the function(s), not the function itself. So if you have 1,000 calls to the same step in this case, you leak 1,000*# of functions instances of {}.

Note that even this can be solved simply by using step.fn, which I didn't realize when I'd originally posted the bug, so I'm not sure if it's worth really paying attention to.

[alexanderdean]

Is there documentation for step.fn?

[Deleted user]

@alexanderdean - Not that I see, but it's fairly simple:

var steps = step.fn(function(){
    // code...
}, function(){
    // code...
});

steps();