What is the runtime solution for importing TypeScript files? (Using type: "module", without access to environment variables/arguments)

[brianjenkins94]

require("ts-node").register(/* ...tsconfig */)

require("hello.ts");

Used to work.

I'm not finding a programmatic --loader=ts-node/esm-based solution.

Is there one?

---

Attempting to reason through how ts-node/dist/esm.js works, seems to suggest that you could:

import { fileURLToPath } from 'url';
import { createRequire } from 'module';
const require = createRequire(fileURLToPath(import.meta.url));

const {
  resolve,
  load,
  getFormat,
  transformSource,
} from "ts-node/esm";

But load comes back undefined.

[cspotcode]

Node does not have any runtime API for this, so it's a node limitation.

[brianjenkins94]

Thanks for the confirmation.

For anybody looking for a "workaround":

#!/usr/bin/env node

import { spawnSync } from "child_process";
import * as path from "path";
import * as url from "url";

const __filename = url.fileURLToPath(import.meta.url);
const __dirname = path.dirname(__filename);

let directory = __dirname;

const options = {
	"cwd": directory,
	"encoding": "utf8",
	"stdio": "inherit"
};

if (process.platform === "win32") {
	const bash = path.join(process.env["ProgramW6432"], "Git", "usr", "bin", "bash.exe");
	const wsl = path.join(process.env["windir"], "System32", "bash.exe");

	if (fs.existsSync(bash)) {
		options["env"] = {
			"PATH": "/mingw64/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin"
		};

		options["shell"] = bash;
	} else if (fs.existsSync(wsl)) {
		const { root, dir, base } = path.parse(directory);

		directory = "/mnt/" + root.split(":")[0].toLowerCase() + "/" + dir.substring(root.length).replace(/\\/g, "/") + "/" + base;

		options["shell"] = wsl;
	} else {
		throw new Error("No suitable shell found. Aborting.");
	}
}

spawnSync("node", [
	"--experimental-specifier-resolution=node",
	"--loader=ts-node/esm",
	path.join(directory, "hello.ts"),
	...process.argv
], options);