External modules are resolved / re-written instead of being ignored

[matthew-dean]

• Rollup Plugin Name: @rollup/plugin-node-resolve
• Rollup Plugin Version: 9.0.0
• Rollup Version: 2.30.0
• Operating System (or Browser): macOS 10.15.7
• Node Version: 10.22.0
• Link to reproduction: https://repl.it/join/xdisrknw-matthewdean2

Expected Behavior

• External modules should not be resolved / re-written, as they are, by definition, external

Actual Behavior

• External modules are re-written with a /node_modules/ path. This prevents the Rollup-bundled library from being imported as a module into another repo, as dependencies will not be local to the original repo, they will be installed as dependencies in the importing repo.

For example this line:
import axios from 'axios'
should remain:
import axios from 'axios'

Instead, it turns into:
import axios from './node_modules/axios/index.js';

Additional Information

Any temporary workarounds to this behavior would be welcome.

[matthew-dean]

Note: if I do this:

external: ['axios']

... then this works as expected, but I'm not sure why that should be the case, when Rollup's examples use /node_modules/ to treat anything from node modules as external.

[shellscape]

We're going to have a new version of node-resolve out (in what I hope is a few days) and I believe it may solve this problem.

[stale]

Hey folks. This issue hasn't received any traction for 60 days, so we're going to close this for housekeeping. If this is still an ongoing issue, please do consider contributing a Pull Request to resolve it. Further discussion is always welcome even with the issue closed. If anything actionable is posted in the comments, we'll consider reopening it. ⓘ

[matthew-dean]

Please re-open! This is still an issue as of @rollup/plugin-node-resolve version 11.1.1

[matthew-dean]

Are there also no workarounds to this issue?

[shellscape]

Given the age of the issue and the updates made to the plugin since, please open a new issue with your reproduction.

[tjenkinson]

Hi @matthew-dean I think the reason this happens is because the node-resolve plugin does the resolve to the path to the entry point and then hands control back to rollup. Then rollup sees that it matches the regex, and it becomes an external.

In your repl for example axios is considered fine, because it does not match /node_modules/.

What you want to happen is node-resolve to resolve the module to the path, and then if that path matches something in externals, for node-resolve itself to say the import is an external.

Wondering if there's a nice way to solve this.

[tjenkinson]

Got a fix. Will open PR shortly and reopening this issue because I'll reference it in the PR.

[matthew-dean]

@tjenkinson Thanks for looking at it!

Through trial and error, I was indeed able to get node resolve to not re-write imports by being explicit about each one and doing something like:

  external: [
    'vue',
    'cleave.js',
    /^vuetify/
  ],

vs

  external: [
    /node_modules/
  ],

What was confusing about that is that external is, of course, a rollup property, and I wasn't changing anything about the node-resolve settings.

[tjenkinson]

Spoke a bit too soon. Opened the draft PR but tests are hanging. I think there might be an issue where { skipSelf: true } is not working, but need to spend more time debugging.

[tjenkinson]

Figured out why it fails (#799 (comment)). Not sure how to work around that yet 🤔

[tjenkinson]

@matthew-dean curious though, if you’re treating everything in node_modules as external why do you need the plugin?

[appsforartists]

I think this change might be breaking resolution for modules that aren't directly in node_modules.

Here is a snippet of my rollup.config.js:

    resolve({
      modulesOnly: true,
      dedupe: ['firebase'],
    }),
    resolve({
      // preact@10 is failing `modulesOnly: true`.  TODO: find out why.
      resolveOnly: ['preact'],
      dedupe: ['preact'],
      mainFields: ['module'],
    }),

and here's the top of my bundle:

import { Block, Row } from 'jsxstyle/preact';
import { subscribeToTaskState, connectToFirebase, logStart, logCompletion, logIneligible } from 'endor-remote';
import { assignmentId, getLogHost, LogHost, log } from 'firebreather';
import { makeExperiment } from 'firebreather-preact';

The top import is in node_modules/jsxstyle/preact. The other three are yarn linked into this project. All were resolved correctly in prior versions (leaving no externals in my bundle).

v13.0.0 is the plugin version that breaks my project. Its changelog sent me here.