CJS configuration files in ESM projects do not freshly import

[spence-s]

I ran into a situation where if a configuration file is a cjs file, then cosmiconfig will always return the same configuration files between runs even if it has changed:

consider a quick psuedo example:

const getConfig = async () => {
  const configExplorer = cosmiconfig(MODULE_NAME);

  const config = await configExplorer.search('...');
  
  return config
}

// see the old config
const oldConfig = await getConfig()

// change the config somehow
changeConfigSomehow();

// should see an updated config here
const newConfig = await getConfig()

This works for JSON file types, but CJS file type in and ESM project will fail.

My hunch is that it is because it gets cached in the internal ESM cache which cannot be busted like the old require cache. see nodejs/node#49442

Internally, cosmiconfig uses a package called import-fresh which can only do fresh imports for the CJS cache, in an ESM context, I don't believe it works.