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external('file') breaks if browserify can't resolve 'file'.

See original GitHub issue

So, I want to provide my own versions of the core modules, not to run them in the browser, but instead to run them in a secure context.

From what I can see, I should use browserify.external(file) to tell browserify that i’m using an external module, however, this breaks if the module required is not provided by browserify-resolve.

example:

var browserify = require('browserify')
var path = require('path')

var secure = browserify(path.resolve(process.argv[2]))

var core = [
  "assert"   , "buffer_ieee754", "buffer"        , "child_process"
, "cluster"  , "console"       , "constants"     , "crypto"
, "_debugger", "dgram"         , "dns"           , "domain"
, "events"   , "freelist"      , "fs"            , "http"  
, "https"    , "_linklist"     , "module"        , "net" 
, "path"     , "punycode"      , "querystring"   , "readline"
, "repl"     , "stream"        , "string_decoder", "sys"
, "timers"   , "tls"           , "tty"           , "url"
, "util"     , "vm"            , "zlib"          , "os"
]

//don't bundle any core modules
core.forEach(function (m) {
  secure.external(m)
})


secure
  .bundle()
  .pipe(process.stdout)

I get this error:

events.js:71
        throw arguments[1]; // Unhandled 'error' event
                       ^
Error: module "buffer_ieee754" not found in require()
    at Browserify.require (/Users/dominictarr/c/node_modules/browserify/index.js:58:46)
    at resolve (/Users/dominictarr/c/node_modules/browserify/node_modules/browser-resolve/index.js:115:16)
    at Browserify.require (/Users/dominictarr/c/node_modules/browserify/index.js:56:5)
    at Browserify.external (/Users/dominictarr/c/node_modules/browserify/index.js:95:17)
    at /Users/dominictarr/c/securify/index.js:21:10
    at Array.forEach (native)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/dominictarr/c/securify/index.js:20:6)
    at Module._compile (module.js:449:26)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:467:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:356:32)

the error comes from here:

https://github.com/substack/node-browserify/blob/master/index.js#L59

which is before the bit that checks whether that file should be excluded.

https://github.com/substack/node-browserify/blob/master/index.js#L71-L73

So, it has to be able to resolve modules that I want to exclude… which seems unnecessary, especially for non-relative modules.