What is rg?

[profbbrown]

Every minute or so, my newly-built 1.48 Theia spawns about a dozen rg processes, which slows the UI down to a crawl. What are these, what do they do, and do we need so many of them all at once?

theia       8       1  0 09:04 pts/0    00:00:01 node /opt/yarn/bin/yarn.js theia start /home --hostname 0.0.0.0 --port 3000
theia     338       8  0 09:04 pts/0    00:00:00 /bin/sh -c /theia/node_modules/.bin/theia start /home --hostname 0.0.0.0 --port 3000
theia     339     338  0 09:04 pts/0    00:00:00 /usr/local/bin/node /theia/node_modules/.bin/theia start /home --hostname 0.0.0.0 --port 3000
theia     350     339  3 09:04 ?        00:07:13 /usr/local/bin/node /theia/lib/backend/main.js /home --hostname 0.0.0.0 --port 3000
theia     361     350  0 09:04 ?        00:00:32 /usr/local/bin/node /theia/lib/backend/ipc-bootstrap --nsfwOptions={}
theia     367     350  0 09:04 ?        00:00:06 /usr/local/bin/node /theia/lib/backend/plugin-host
theia     381     350  0 09:04 pts/1    00:00:00 /bin/bash -l
theia     399     367  0 09:04 ?        00:00:00 /usr/local/bin/node /theia/plugins/vscode.json-language-features/extension/./server/dist/node/jsonServerMain --node-ipc --clientProcessId=367
theia    5858     350  0 09:51 pts/2    00:00:00 /bin/bash -l
theia    7837     350  0 12:22 ?        00:00:02 /usr/local/bin/node /theia/lib/backend/plugin-host
theia    7844     350  0 12:22 pts/3    00:00:00 /bin/bash -l
theia    7866    7837  0 12:22 ?        00:00:00 /usr/local/bin/node /theia/plugins/vscode.json-language-features/extension/./server/dist/node/jsonServerMain --node-ipc --clientProcessId=7837
theia   28936     350 10 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   28943     350  9 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   28972     350  9 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   28984     350  8 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   28996     350  8 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   29002     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 [rg] <defunct>
theia   29008     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   29014     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 [rg] <defunct>
theia   29015     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   29016     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 [rg] <defunct>
theia   29023     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   29033     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 [rg] <defunct>
theia   29044     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   29046     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 [rg] <defunct>
theia   29047     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   29058     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 [rg] <defunct>
theia   29064     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   29069     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 [rg] <defunct>
theia   29075     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   29081     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git
theia   29087     350  0 12:31 ?        00:00:00 /theia/lib/backend/native/rg --files --hidden --case-sensitive --no-require-git --no-config --glob !.git

[msujew]

Hey @profbbrown,

that's the ripgrep process. It basically powers all of Theia's/vscode's code search. I'm not quite sure though why Theia spawns so many. We haven't changed anything about the ripgrep related code in a while.

[profbbrown]

While this was happening, I noticed that the main.js process was also chewing up the CPU. In the process listing I posted, it had consumed over 7 minutes of time and was using up 100% of the CPU. Something I did must have gotten it into a spin. Just prior to that I had been doing two things: running a commands in the Terminal that were producing 30,000 lines of output, and editing the output of those commands in the file editor. As I ran more of those commands, things seemed to get worse and worse until I finally killed the Theia container and restarted it.

[danepowell]

Possible bug: #13712

[Lythenas]

I am having the same problem still on theia 1.50. I can also see MANY (like 1000+) defunct rg processes.

Is there some way to debug why the processes are started? As far as I can tell they are all started with identical parameters and environment variables.