ES Modules: suggestions for improvement

[Sam Tobin-Hochstadt]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 3:37 PM, James Burke <jrburke at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 11:56 AM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <samth at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>> Then we can use the module like this:
>>
>>    System.load("add_blaster", function(ab) { return ab.go(4,5); })
>>
>> or, since we know that "add_blaster" is a local module:
>>
>>    let { go } = System.get("add_blaster");
>>    go(9,10);
>>
>> or, if we put the call to `System.set` in the previous script tag, we
>> can just do:
>>
>>    import go from "add_blaster";
>>    go(2,2);
>>
>> At no point here did we have to write a module system.
>
> This is not usually how we have found loading to be done in AMD.
> 'add_blaster' is usually not loaded before that import call is first
> seen. Call this module foo:
>
>   import go from "add_blaster";
>
> The developer asks for foo first. foo is loaded, and parsed.
> 'add_blaster' is seen and then loaded and parsed (although not sure
> how 'add_blaster' is converted to a path…):
>
> add_blaster calls the runtime:
>
>   System.set("add_blaster", { go : function(n,m) { return n + m; } });
>
> What happens according to the current modules proposal?

I'm not quite sure what you're asking.  If the question is: does
importing "foo" automatically compile "add_blaster", then yes, that
happens automatically.  You can think about that as doing something
internal that's similar to `System.set`.  But that's all implicit.  If
we are in a system like NPM, where "add_blaster" might map
automatically to "add_blaster.js", we could have:

foo.js:

    import go from "add_blaster"
    go(1,2)

add_blaster.js:

    export function go(n,m) { return n + m; };

> Does an error get generated for foo's import line stating that
> add_blaster does not export go, or are those checks optional, as David
> Bruant suggests on another message in this thread?

add_blaster does export `go` in my example, so I'm not sure what you mean.

> My previous interaction on this list led me to believe that I would
> have to construct a userland library to make sure I load and execute
> the script that does System.set("add_blaster") before foo is parsed.

Certainly you shouldn't have to create a userland loader in order to
get examples like I've written to work.  You should only ever need to
create a loader if you want to customize things, such as redirecting
some things to localStorage, or setting up a sandbox.
-- 
sam th
samth at ccs.neu.edu