Will Parcel 2 feature externals or aliases without requiring url

[afridley]

❔ Question

In the Parcel 2 RFC #1952 (comment)
There is discussion of handling externals through aliases in the following way

"aliases": {
  "react": {
     "url": "https://unpkg.com/react@16.4.2/umd/react.production.min.js",
     "global": "React"
   },
   "datatables": { 
     "url": "//cdn.datatables.net/1.10.19/css/jquery.dataTables.min.css",
     "global": null
   }
}

I am wondering if this will this work with out a url? In case you want to replace a module (@wordpress/blob) with a value (wp.blob) to be used to retrieve a global (wp.blob) variable.

example from webpack

{ 
  externals: { 
    '@wordpress/blob': 'wp.blob'
   }
}

Or will this type of behavior not be supported by aliases?

🔦 Context

Right now Parcel does not ignore externals or you need to setup additional steps per external which can become tedious.
example
#144 (comment)

🌍 Your Environment

Software	Version(s)
Parcel	1.12.3
Node	10.16.0
npm/Yarn	1.13.0
Operating System	MacOs

[devongovett]

We haven't talked much about externals yet, but this is good to consider. Thanks for bringing this back up.

I think maybe it could still work with aliases:

"aliases": {
  "react": {
     "global": "React"
   }
}

[devongovett]

Closing in favor of #3305