Uncaught TypeError: Object.defineProperty called on non-object, caused by tagged template literal in imported module

[broofa]

🐛 bug report

[Similar issue as reported in #4559 and #5525. Opening a new report, with attached SSCCE]

It appears that certain template string patterns will break parcel build, causing the above error (but not break with the dev server).

💻 SSCCE

See attached
parcel_bug.zip
for minimal, reproduceable, and verifiable example. Unzip and install as follows...

$ unzip -l parcel_bug.zip
Archive:  parcel_bug.zip
  Length      Date    Time    Name
---------  ---------- -----   ----
        0  04-13-2021 08:23   parcel_bug/
      144  04-13-2021 08:10   parcel_bug/.babelrc
      132  04-13-2021 08:04   parcel_bug/index.html
        0  04-13-2021 07:54   parcel_bug/js/
      375  04-13-2021 08:20   parcel_bug/package.json
      103  04-13-2021 07:55   parcel_bug/js/index.js
      124  04-13-2021 07:55   parcel_bug/js/simplur.js
---------                     -------
      878                     7 files

$ unzip parcel_bug.zip
# etc...

$ cd parcel_bug

$ npm i
# etc...

Now do ...

parcel index.html

... and open browser to http://localhost:1234 .

Note: No errors in developer console (works as expected)

Next, do...

$ parcel build index.html

$ npx static-server dist

... and open browser to http://localhost:9080.

Note: "Uncaught TypeError: Object.defineProperty called on non-object" appears in console.

Discussion

This appears to be triggered by the tagged template strings in imported modules. For example...

• If you inline function simplur() {...} in index.js (so index.js doesn't have to import simplur), the error goes away.

🌍 Your Environment

$ npx envinfo --system --browsers --npmPackages --binaries
npx: installed 1 in 1.53s

  System:
    OS: macOS 11.1
    CPU: (8) x64 Apple M1
    Memory: 397.64 MB / 16.00 GB
    Shell: 5.1.0 - /usr/local/bin/bash
  Binaries:
    Node: 14.16.1 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.16.1/bin/node
    npm: 6.14.12 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.16.1/bin/npm
  Browsers:
    Chrome: 89.0.4389.114
    Firefox: 86.0
    Safari: 14.0.2
  npmPackages:
    @babel/core: 7.13.15 => 7.13.15
    @parcel/babel-plugin-transform-runtime: 2.0.0-nightly.1823 => 2.0.0-nightly.1823
    parcel: 2.0.0-nightly.636 => 2.0.0-nightly.636

[broofa]

Update: Narrowing this down further, it looks like this is caused by the interaction of @babel/preset-env and @parcel/babel-preset-env in .babelrc. I'm not sure how/why I ended up with both of those in there, but removing the former fixes the problem in the SSCCE here. However doing so in the actual project where I ran into this is causing other issues, so I'm going to leave this open for the time being.

[broofa]

Well, the other problem went away after removing @babel/preset-env from .babelrc, and then doing rm -fr .parcel-cache node-modules package-lock.json && npm install. 'Not sure what was going on there. 🤷

I'm going to leave this open because...

1. Bugs that only occur during the build process quickly undermine the trust-worthiness of a bundler.
2. The pain of diagnosing this was pretty high. The error message and stack were completely detached from what was actually causing the problem. This necessitated a lot of trial-and-error debugging, with a lot of waiting around for the build process to run.
3. The bug occurs deep inside the boilerplate code injected by Parcel/Babel. I'm pretty sure there's a check that can be added somewhere to help surface this earlier and with a more relevant error message.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed in 14 days if no further activity occurs.