Re: Non-bootstrappable NPM packages

[Timothy Sample]

Hi Jelle,

Jelle Licht <address@hidden> writes:

> Timothy Sample <address@hidden> writes:
>
> [snip]
>
>> I’ve come to think that bootstrapping JavaScript might be easier than it
>> looks.  As time goes on, Node gets better at the newer JavaScript
>> features.  This removes the need for things like Babel or Rollup, since
>> with some care, Node can run the source directly with out any
>> transformations or bundling.  That being said, TypeScript looks to be a
>> major issue, as it is used in many fundamental JavaScript packages and
>> it is not bootstrappable.
>
> Very recently (IE about 94 minutes ago), I found out something
> interesting that might be helpful; Sucrase[0] is, among other things, a
> typescript transpiler that does not do any type checking, and it only
> has some runtime dependencies.

That is exciting!  Did you see that the README links to a similar
project written in Rust <https://swc-project.github.io/>?  There’s also
a Rust-based bundler called Packem <https://packem.github.io/>.  Maybe
those two projects are all that we need.  With “mrustc”, the “rewrite it
in Rust” trend looks good for bootstrapping.  :)

> I created some “fiio”-packages as well [1] , and I have confirmed that
> it actually works! My next step was of course to compile TypeScript
> proper, and this worked with one tiny snag that I reported at [2]. After
> manually fixing these problems in the TypeScript source tree, I was able
> to transpile the TypeScript sources using guix-packaged
> `node-sucrase-bootstrap'.

Cool.  That looks really promising.  I’m glad to see that the current
“node-build-system” can do the same trick I’ve been doing.


-- Tim