require imports no longer work

[ethanneff]

code if (__DEV__) require('../Reactotron/Reactotron');

working in "knip": "5.13.0",

✂️ Excellent, Knip found no issues.

failing in "knip": "5.19.0",

Unused files (2)
src/store/getStoreList.ts
src/packages/Reactotron/Reactotron.ts
Unused exports (1)
storageInstance  unknown  src/packages/Storage/Storage.ts:16:14

[webpro]

Any chance you could create a reproduction of the issue or add a failing case to one of the test fixtures?

And what's the first version of Knip this fails in for you?

[nihalgonsalves]

It stopped working after 5.16.0. Here's a minimal reproduction:

• npm init -y

• entry.ts

  require("./child");

• child.ts

  function foo() {}
  
  foo();

• knip.jsonc

  {
    "$schema": "https://unpkg.com/knip@5/schema.json",
    "entry": ["./entry.ts"]
  }

• Tests:

  $ npx [email protected]
  ✂️  Excellent, Knip found no issues.
  
  $ npx [email protected]
  Unused files (1)
  child.ts
  
  $ npx [email protected]
  Unused files (1)
  child.ts

I couldn't reproduce it with .js files, so maybe that's a hint.

[webpro]

I couldn't reproduce it with .js files, so maybe that's a hint.

It is. Isn't it odd to require() ts files without an extension? It's not that common, I wonder what tooling/bundler we're using here? And/or what TS config settings?

[nihalgonsalves]

Hmm I don't think it's unusual. Using tsc and running the output with node was the default basic Node + TypeScript setup (on the backend) until pretty recently.

I suppose using require with that setup is perhaps uncommon, as tsc does compile import statements for CJS. The case I ran into was using an entrypoint with require('reflect-metadata'); require('./app'); (I was able to change the knip entry as a workaround).

[webpro]

I really need an actual reproduction of the issue. The basics work, I just added 0c56610, perhaps its specific TS config settings?

[nihalgonsalves]

Does my previous reproduction not work? That was without any tsconfig in the directory at all – just those three files and the default package.json from npm init -y

[webpro]

Copy-pasting something here is not a reproduction. No tsconfig.json is most likely the problem. In isolation, why would you expect that to work? Without context I don't understand the situation/use case here.

[nihalgonsalves]

I was trying to make it as minimal as possible .. wouldn't tsconfig.json just imply some default settings anyway?

Here's my initial reproduction with a bare tsconfig.json added; it doesn't seem to make a difference to the knip output: https://codesandbox.io/p/devbox/knip-issue-681-xkv92z

I'm not sure I understand why you wouldn't expect that to work? It's a valid program that can be run via tsc and then node on the output. I added those scripts to the sandbox too.

[webpro]

Thanks for the reproduction.

The underlying issue is that require() uses node dist/entry.js from the package.json#main as a starting point. And dist/*.js is also part of the project files by default, you probably don't want that.

So my recommendation would be to split up src and dist directories, eg:

{
    "$schema": "https://unpkg.com/knip@5/schema.json",
    "entry": ["src/entry.ts"],
    "project": ["src/*.ts"],
}

Not sure if this also is the "fix" for OP, but based on this repro I think the refactoring I did more reveals an issue in cases like this than that it introduces a regression. That split is also better for performance, as Knip does/should not wander off into compiled build artifacts.

[webpro]

Since OP didn't provide a reproduction and I believe the repro that was provided is handled properly I'm going to close this issue.