babel: Babel-node not working with "type": "module" in package.json

I have the following script that I’m running with npx babel-node script.js

let a = 0;
let b = 1;
console.log(a ?? b);

It executes fine with my babel config

{
	"plugins": ["@babel/plugin-proposal-nullish-coalescing-operator"]
}

When I add “type”: “module” to my package.json file, the npx babel-node script.js command fails to run and I get the error SyntaxError: Unexpected token '?'.

So it seems specifying my package as module, prevents babel-node from loading the babel config?

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 4 years ago
Comments: 23 (11 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

So what is the suggestion here? My understanding is that we use @babel/node for developing a node backend with babel configuration, and then we are supposed to compile the backend using the babel cli for production. In order to keep using import in my node app, I use "type": "module" for the compiling step… which breaks @bable/node and therefore development… this seems like an issue to me, shouldn’t this be reopened?

+10

bradley on Aug 12, 2020

https://github.com/nicolo-ribaudo/babel-native-esm-demo

my eslint config, my rollup config

I don’t know if those tools support native ESM configs, but Babel does.

nicolo-ribaudo on Nov 8, 2020

I would like to help out in this doc fix.

sidntrivedi012 on Feb 10, 2020

@nnmrts I think you misunderstood this issue. You can successfully use ES modules with Babel on Node.js and I’m doing it in different projects. You can use ES modules to write your Babel config.

The only thing that you cannot do is using the @babel/node and @babel/register packages.

nicolo-ribaudo on Nov 7, 2020

This is a nasty issue once you run into it - this essentially is keeping me from being able to use newer javascript features and native ES modules alongside one another - it breaks babel-node which is used in development

mdierolf on Oct 28, 2020

The problem is if you set type: module in package.json then your babel.config.js must be in module format (or you will get Error while loading config - module is not defined error).

And babel config in esm format works fine with @babel/cli but not with @babel/register. So for now it is not possible to have type: module and using babel-node.

farwayer on Apr 20, 2020

Should we close this issue since it has been solved in https://github.com/babel/website/pull/2177 ?

sidntrivedi012 on Feb 29, 2020

Worth add a note to https://babeljs.io/docs/en/babel-register that babel-register does not support compiling native Node.js es modules on the fly.

JLHwung on Feb 9, 2020