Add ability to import modules using absolute paths

Since working with relative paths (../../../) can be such a pain, we should investigate adding absolute import paths to the pipeline.

This Gist outlines four possibilities:

1. The Symlink
2. The Global
3. The Module
4. The Environment

In my experience I’ve only used the NODE_PATH= environment variable (which worked as expected), but in a complex environment like Force (and possibly Heroku, though this article seems to suggest it’s fine) there could be problems to investigate.

The Browserify Handbook also outlines some options.

Additionally, since we’re using Babel, it would be worth investigating babel-plugin-module-resolver which compiles down paths into a safe format via a config step. We’re currently using this in in Prediction.

cc @craigspaeth

[damassi]

Another thing I’d like to add about relative path difficulties is project exploration and especially refactoring – it’s difficult to reason about what is what and whats been used where when each path can potentially be different:

# a.coffee
filter = require('../index.coffee')

# b.coffee
filter = require('../../../index.coffee')

# c.coffee
filter = require('./index.coffee')

Are they all the same, or different? In terms of refactoring, one of the biggest points of stress is being able to ask yourself if a change you make to a file in one place will have cascading effects elsewhere. When pathnames are absolute, you can do a global search to see exactly where the component or whatever has been used, and safely make changes. Whole layers of complexity get removed when pathnames are locked down.

[alloy]

Spoke to an MS employee, they’re using the following combination:

• TS/Intellisense works by specifying the baseUrl option in the TS config.
• babel-plugin-module-resolver to actually rewrite the paths in the resulting JS.

So the babel plugin would work after all.