Module build options

[jessegrosjean]

Thanks again for splitting this out into its own project. I do plan to use it, but I think it will take me a while replace my existing pieced together solution.

I'm been thinking more about module system support. I don't want plugin developers to have to perform a build step. To this point I was trying to add require support to JavascriptCore.

I'm now wondering if it makes more sense to embed a build system like esbuild and have my app perform the build step each time a plugin changes. That would open up many other options too, such as typescript based plugins.

Does that seem like a reasonable approach? The cost that I'm aware of is that esbuild compressed is ~5mb, but otherwise it seems like an appealing approach for bundle support and more.

[mhayes853]

I think if you would like to have more direct support for modern syntax and things like typescript, then this sounds like a better option than implementing require directly.

AFAIK apps like CodeSandbox and StackBlitz take a similar approach though I believe CodeSandbox uses its own bundler that runs in an iFrame in the browser. It seems esbuild can even be used directly in the browser via WASM, so I would imagine that your usecase would mirror that somewhat in the native world.

My first thought to support things like modern import syntax without hooking into private JavaScriptCore APIs would be through some kind of syntax translation than runs on top of JSContext.evaluateScript. This is essentially what you would get by using esbuild in addition to built-in typescript support and other niceties.