Rationale for dropping ModuleImport syntax?

[Domenic Denicola]

I am beginning to come around to the removal. It will just encourage module authors to use default exports exclusively (e.g. fs will default-export an object including readFile et al., instead of exporting multiple functions), which will put us squarely back in parity with the CommonJS/AMD systems, and ease migration.

If module authors try to use multi-exports, they will get upset users who wish to be able to do `import _ from "underscore"; _.zip(...)`, but cannot. So instead they will use default exports only, which does allow this familiar style.

In the end all of the non-default export forms, and the braced multi-import form, will just be relegated to the "bad parts" bin, and default exports and unbraced single-import will remain in the "good parts" bin, giving us the same CommonJS/AMD world we have today, but with some vestigial syntax unused by popular libraries.

From: es-discuss [mailto:es-discuss-bounces at mozilla.org] On Behalf Of Axel Rauschmayer
Sent: Monday, June 9, 2014 02:39
To: es-discuss list
Subject: Rationale for dropping ModuleImport syntax?

Context: https://gist.github.com/caridy/eefb9b104874465d4e1c#1-moduleimport-syntax-importdeclaration

```js
module foo from "foo"; // drop this
import bar from "bar";
```

I'm seeing the following contra against dropping ModuleImport syntax:

> Contra: without a way to access the module object, it is difficult to deal with modules with many exports (e.g.: underscore), but we could fix this by using a reflective API to access imported modules

Isn't this a frequent use case? Which would lead to ugly and very inconsistent code, especially if multiple imports are involved. I also don't see how CommonJS-style modules could be neatly migrated to ES6 modules if this feature was dropped.

I do agree that the ModuleImport reads a bit strange, but that could be fixed, e.g. via a suggestion I've seen somewhere:

```js
import module foo from "foo";
```

--
Dr. Axel Rauschmayer
axel at rauschma.de<mailto:axel at rauschma.de>
rauschma.de



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es-discuss/attachments/20140609/57c54899/attachment.html>