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module: conditional exports condition renaming proposal for usability

Rodrigo Muino Tomonari requested to merge github/fork/guybedford/condition-names into master

A major priority for the modules implementation is resolver stability, and the dual mode story through conditional exports is a big remaining piece of this.

Common usability feedback out of various discussions on conditional exports so far has been that the "default" field may be seen to be a confusing name, and that it isn't clear when the "require" condition will match either.

To try and improve the overall usability this PR makes the following condition name changes:

  • Add a new "import" condition as the converse of the "require" condition, only applying for the ESM loader.

All conditions (except for "default") remain behind the --experimental-conditional-exports flag.

This makes the dual mode workflow look like:

{
  "type": "module",
  "main": "./index.cjs",
  "exports": {
    "require": "./index.cjs",
    "import": "./index.js"
  }
}

instead of the previous:

{
  "type": "module",
  "main": "./index.cjs",
  "exports": {
    "require": "./index.cjs",
    "default": "./index.js"
  }
}

the UX improvement being that the former seems like it will look more natural to most users unfamiliar with "exports".

Modules group discussion in https://github.com/nodejs/modules/issues/452, which this PR can be considered blocked on for now.

Checklist
  • make -j4 test (UNIX), or vcbuild test (Windows) passes
  • tests and/or benchmarks are included
  • documentation is changed or added
  • commit message follows commit guidelines

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