This post talks about how Wallaby.js can be integrated with require-self while transpiling the module from ES2015 to ES5 for npm distribution.

Wallaby.js

Wallaby.js is a real-time test runner. I am using it in my editor to get instant feed-back while typing JavaScript code. It is amazing to have these questions answered in real-time :

• Is the syntax correct?
• Does this compile and run?
• What are the values of my variables?
• Are my tests still all green?
• What is my code coverage?

See Scott Hanselman’s blog on Wallaby.js who instantenously fell in love with it.

Require self

I blogged about require-self which allows me to write, inside module foo:

import Foo from `foo`;

just as if foo were an external module. This is really useful when working in deeply nested source trees, where getting back to the root is clumsy, at best, with ../../.. (or maybe ../../../..).

Get Wallaby to work with require-self

I badly wanted to make Wallaby work with require-self. My first attempt in December 2015 did not get me anywhere (see this issue).

I decided to follow another route.

I modified the node_modules/foo.js produced by require-self, so that it would point at ../src/index.js (thus matching my package.json main entry point), then subitted a pull request. yortus pointed out that it should work with a plain .. reference and that I should rather look for a solution with Wallaby.js.

My issue was quickly resolved by Artem Govorov:

    files: [
      ...
      {pattern: 'node_modules/foo.js'},
      {pattern: 'package.json', instrument: false}
    ],

At last, I had a running solution with require-self. Great!

But I can’t publish to npm!

Artem’s solution worked, but when I decided to use it in a module where I need to transpile ./src/index.js to ./lib/index.js using Babel, I was faced with this dilemma:

• Make Wallaby.js work and use "main": "src/index.js" in the package.json file. But this does not allow me to publish the npm package.
• Make NPM work and use "main": "src/index.js" in the package.json file. But this confuses Wallaby.js, since it is no longer looking at my live source code.

Hence this issue.

Once again, Artem came to the rescue: patch require() (as he already suggested in December 2015) and forget about the previous solution. But this time, he included a full snippet of how to do it.

Here is the final version of my bootstrap(wallaby) function found in wallaby.conf.js:

    bootstrap: function (wallaby) {
      // See http://wallabyjs.com/docs/config/bootstrap.html
      var path = require ('path');

      // Ensure that we can require self (just like what module 'require-self'
      // does), but remapping by default the path to './src' rather than './lib'
      // as specified by package "main".
      var packageConfig = require (path.join (wallaby.localProjectDir, 'package.json'));      var packageName = packageConfig.name;
      var modulePrototype = require ('module').Module.prototype;
      if (!modulePrototype._originalRequire) {
        modulePrototype._originalRequire = modulePrototype.require;
        modulePrototype.require = function (filePath) {
          if (filePath === packageName) {
            return modulePrototype._originalRequire.call (this, path.join (wallaby.projectCacheDir, 'src'));
          } else {
            return modulePrototype._originalRequire.call (this, filePath);
          }
        };
      }
      ...
    }