CODEWITHSUNDEEP
babeljs
StephenWeiss
StephenWeiss

Reputation: 1073

Do @babel/runtime / @babel/plugin-transform-runtime in CLI need to be dependencies (i.e. not devDependencies)?

I'm working on a small Node CLI that uses Babel to transpile my code. I am not currently using Webpack or any bundler.

The use-case for this app is to download it from a registry (e.g., npm) and then use it directly.

I have recently added @babel/runtime as a dependency to the app (it was a silent dependency before, needed for other packages, but only those that are listed as devDependencies and so was included in the production bundle).

My question ultimately is: is this the best way to handle this situation? Ideally the plugin-transform-runtime would transpile the code and get out of the way so that babel wasn't needed as a dependency at all.

Additional context for the state of things before I added @babel/runtime as a dependency, this is what I would see when I tried to utilize the CLI:

stephen@Stephens-MBP-2 code % volta install note-mgr-cli@alpha
success: installed [email protected] with executables: nom
stephen@Stephens-MBP-2 code % nom init
internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:968
  throw err;
  ^

Error: Cannot find module '@babel/runtime/helpers/interopRequireDefault'
Require stack:
- /Users/stephen/.volta/tools/image/packages/note-mgr-cli/0.0.4-2/dist/index.js
- /Users/stephen/.volta/tools/image/packages/note-mgr-cli/0.0.4-2/index.js
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:965:15)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:841:27)
    at Module.require (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1025:19)
    at require (internal/modules/cjs/helpers.js:72:18)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/stephen/.volta/tools/image/packages/note-mgr-cli/0.0.4-2/dist/index.js:3:30)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1137:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1157:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:985:32)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:878:14)
    at Module.require (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1025:19) {
  code: 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND',
  requireStack: [
    '/Users/stephen/.volta/tools/image/packages/note-mgr-cli/0.0.4-2/dist/index.js',
    '/Users/stephen/.volta/tools/image/packages/note-mgr-cli/0.0.4-2/index.js'
  ]
}

Inspecting the file, dist/index.js, it's clear why this would be a problem (it references @babel/runtime, but @babel/runtime was not present in the node_modules):

"use strict";

var _interopRequireDefault = require("@babel/runtime/helpers/interopRequireDefault");

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1593

Answers (1)

StephenWeiss
StephenWeiss

Reputation: 1073

The short answer is yes: @babel/runtime (and @babel/plugin-transform-runtime) is intended to be treated as a dependency.

From the Babel docs

Usage

This is meant to be used as a runtime dependency along with the Babel plugin @babel/plugin-transform-runtime. Please check out the documentation in that package for usage.)

This is also spelled out in the installation directive which specifies --save (unlike most other @babel packages which are --save-dev):

npm install --save @babel/runtime

Upvotes: 4

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