Usage of ESM imports instead of CommonJS

[theoludwig]

We should use ESM imports instead of CommonJS. See: https://gist.github.com/sindresorhus/a39789f98801d908bbc7ff3ecc99d99c We'll be able to merge #238, #247, and #262 (dependencies updates that only work with ESM) after this change.

Note: It is a BREAKING CHANGE as standard-engine will only work with ESM.

To offer a smoother transition for packages that depends on standard-engine, we should first migrate them to ESM.

Status

• [x] https://github.com/standard/standard/issues/1708
• [x] https://github.com/standard/semistandard/issues/270
• [x] https://github.com/standard/standardx/issues/39
• [x] https://github.com/standard/ts-standard/issues/171

[voxpelli]

I'm not so sure on this one. I would maybe push this one major version forward.

[theoludwig]

I'm not so sure on this one. I would maybe push this one major version forward.

Could you elaborate a little bit more? Do you think it is too early ? What are the downsides to do this change ?

[voxpelli]

The downsides is that we, in addition to other changes, need to change how we import this module in all the projects that uses this module + ideally also convert those to ESM then.

As ESM can easily import CommonJS in Node I think it would be better to start converting the individual users to ESM before converting this module.

Also: I would ideally have the ESM change in a version where there are no other breaking changes as it's enough of a breaking change to migrate to, also having to deal with other breaking changes at the same time becomes a bit too much, so I would rather avoid it if possible :)

[theoludwig]

start converting the individual users to ESM before converting this module

Sounds good to me! :+1: We will do it for v16, so we can slowly migrate the whole organization to ESM.

[jimmywarting]

pkg-conf was also converted to ESM recently - it's much smaller in size now guess we don't have much of a choise to start using ESM if we want to update any of our dependencies now.

[voxpelli]

@jimmywarting We can use many ESM modules in CJS by importing them like await import('pkg-conf'), so we can hold out a while longer

[jimmywarting]

oh great, not many package have the luxury of using lazy import

[theoludwig]

@jimmywarting We can use many ESM modules in CJS by importing them like await import('pkg-conf'), so we can hold out a while longer

Currently, there are #238, #247 and #262 PRs to fix, if it is possible. It is failing because the packages have been converted to ESM, would appreciate a PR if it is possible to fix with dynamic import (await import). @voxpelli

[jimmywarting]

all doe i would have prefer if it got switched to ESM-only, but understand if you are not ready yet to go full ESM-only

if you missed it node-fetch@3 (the largest http lib) just went ESM-only :P

[theoludwig]

all doe i would have prefer if it got switched to ESM-only, but understand if you are not ready yet to go full ESM-only

if you missed it node-fetch@3 (the largest http lib) just went ESM-only :P

I agree I would love to switch to ESM-only, but there are so many things breaking with this change that we still need to wait a little bit before doing that. And it would offer a smoother transition to migrate to ESM only for packages like standard, ts-standard etc, before migrating this one (standard-engine).

[jimmywarting]

for some i think the transition could be easy as many are just executed from cli like so: npx standard so it would not mater what version you use... but then there is half of which that actually use standard scripting-wise

[voxpelli]

@Divlo Okay with you if we close this as completed?

[theoludwig]

@Divlo Okay with you if we close this as completed?

@voxpelli Why? This is not completed? Honestly, I think, we can start the migration in standard-engine if anyone wants to do so even if ts-standard is currently blocked. Of course, the best would be to solve the issue of the ts-standard rewrite first and then do this migration here.

[voxpelli]

@Divlo Remembered wrongly that we had already done the move here, that this was only open due to ts-standard not having adopted it.

Then let’s get the ESM:ing started rather than waiting for ts-standard 👍

[theoludwig]

Unlikely to be done.