December 14, 2023 at 3:12:16 AM UTC

	Since	posts	replies	likes	reposts and quotes	views
Bluesky	May 2023	1,039	8,236	23,127	2,380
Mastodon	Nov 2022	2,399	29,156	55,396	16,820
GitHub	Jul 2010	179	5,777 3,520	33,866	3,317
npm	Jul 2014	139	1,546			75,991,720
YouTube	Dec 2015	30		1,203		32,713
Letterboxd	Mar 2026	55
Blog	Nov 2025	20
Hacker News	Jan 2011	59	575	802
All	Jul 2010	4,807	37,967	114,394	22,517	76,024,433

Filed a Node.js issue as a last resort 😭. If CommonJS supports `import()`, why doesn’t `vm` support `import()`?

https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/51154

Or, I’d love a stable `vm.Module`! Or Node.js ShadowRealms! I shouldn’t have to use a bundler for this stuff.

9 replies

Zach Leatherman 11 hr later

I see this experimental limbo for Node.js’ ESM `vm.Module` causing large scale problems elsewhere too, right?
Jest seems to be trying to stick to Node.js APIs (which is a good goal!) and people are migrating to Vitest for “stable” ESM support—but Vitest is using `esbuild` to sidestep the experimental status.
1. Zach Leatherman 13 hr later
  
  Looks like Vite writes a temporary file to the file system to work around this issue 👀 https://github.com/vitejs/vite/blob/77d5165e2f252bfecbb0eebccc6f04dc8be0c5ba/packages/vite/src/node/config.ts#L1172-L1184
  1. patak 16 hr later
    
    @zachleat We tried to remove the temporary file by using `data:` and had to revert it, but we may try again at one point. That temporary file is a terrible hack.
    https://github.com/vitejs/vite/issues/13267#issuecomment-1624779173
    1. Zach Leatherman 16 hr later
      
      @patak yeah—I don’t blame y’all for going down that road. It would be nice to have a stable vm.Module. It would solve a lot of ESM migration pain!
      1. Zach Leatherman 16 hr later
        
        @patak in some code paths I use the weird Module#_compile trick to allow dynamic import() in CJS (I think I picked it up from Svelte at one point) https://github.com/zachleat/node-retrieve-globals/blob/4fbf1e474e7fedfa79f847e4ebc5d0d2075f9b27/retrieveGlobals.js#L270-L272 (oh and https://github.com/zachleat/esm-import-transformer/ to transform `import` to dynamic `import` 😓)
        so many tricks!
Matthew Phillips 11 hr later

@zachleat I wouldn't count on VM / realms stuff, they've been unstable in a number of ways for 10+ years.
Do workers fulfill your needs?
Zach Leatherman 7 days later

Alert Alert: We have movement, we have movement!
A fully fledged PR to fix the issue (with a warning instead of an error): https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/51244
Exciting!
1. Brian Muenzenmeyer 7 days later
  
  @zachleat Just want to add, as someone helping out where I can on the node project, and also deeply interested in the health of the web and OSS, that the folks on Node.js, in general care deeply about their project, their ecosystem, and their community.
  At the collab summit this summer, I saw them celebrating 10 years, AND planning for the next 10.
  Node.js may not have the alacrity or flash of bun...etc, because they have the burden of momentum.
  Glad you reached out!
  1. Zach Leatherman 8 days later
    
    @brian well said! Node.js has staying power—I’d kinda be surprised if Bun is still around in 5 years