[v25.7] yargs v17 compatibility issue

[liuxingbaoyu]

Version

v25.7.0

Platform

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64

Subsystem

No response

What steps will reproduce the bug?

1. npm i yargs@17.7.2
2. "require('yargs/yargs')" > 1.cjs
3. node 1.cjs

How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?

always

What is the expected behavior? Why is that the expected behavior?

no errors

What do you see instead?

file:///F:/node-yargs/node_modules/yargs/yargs:3
const {applyExtends, cjsPlatformShim, Parser, Yargs, processArgv} = require('./build/index.cjs')
                                                                    ^

ReferenceError: require is not defined in ES module scope, you can use import instead
    at file:///F:/node-yargs/node_modules/yargs/yargs:3:69
    at ModuleJobSync.runSync (node:internal/modules/esm/module_job:534:37)
    at ModuleLoader.importSyncForRequire (node:internal/modules/esm/loader:366:47)
    at loadESMFromCJS (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1628:24)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1793:5)
    at Object..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1951:10)
    at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1532:32)
    at Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1334:12)
    at wrapModuleLoad (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:255:19)
    at Module.require (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1555:12)

Node.js v25.7.

Additional information

I'm not sure if this is a Node.js issue, because yargs uses a file without an extension as the entry point.

[nicolo-ribaudo]

Ref #61600

[nicolo-ribaudo]

The problem is that yargs expects extensionless files to be interpreted as CommonJS, rather than using the disambiguation process that Node.js uses for .js files based on package.json#type.

The new Node.js behavior is not wrong, but if it's not compatible with a package as widely used as yargs there might be an alternative solution. Maybe Node.js should always run the syntax-based detection on extensionless files (idea from @joyeecheung)? "we do not know whether this file is .js,.mjs, or .cjs, so we don't even know if we should look at package.json#type".

[Renegade334]

We do define this behaviour,¹ so I think this counts as a regression.

By default, Node.js will treat the following as CommonJS modules:

• Files with an extension that is not .mjs, .cjs, .json, .node, or .js (when the nearest parent package.json file contains a top-level field "type" with a value of "module", those files will be recognized as CommonJS modules only if they are being included via require(), not when used as the command-line entry point of the program).

Footnotes

1. https://nodejs.org/docs/v25.7.0/api/modules.html#enabling ↩