We have a library that is traditionally client-side only. It uses HTTP Request (or several other dependency libraries) to make REST calls. When using the library, user will initialize with a particular request provider and off they go.
We use webpack in our examples to utilize our library.
It is now extended it to use node-fetch, so if someone wants to use it from nodejs that's supported too.
For people using webpack, webpack is now attempting to pack node-fetch and the require call is failing in the browser. We can get around this with setting an external
"externals" : {
"node-fetch": "{}"
}
Is there a way to define our library so that if the consumer is using webpack target: web, it'd skip the require check for node-fetch? And similarly, if the consumer is using webpack target: nodejs - it needs to include the node-fetch component.
The project in question is https://github.com/OfficeDev/PnP-JS-Core
Thanks for reporting this. So according to This commit and conversation linked to it, the automatic module resolution field (also known as a described-resolve to the webpack resolver instance) changes based on what your target is.
By default, when target is node in your webpack build, resolution in package.json field will default to the main field else, browser field takes priority by default.
More reference https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/151