jsnext:main transpiling

[damianobarbati]

I really do not understand what's the current status in Webpack / babel-loader in transpiling dependencies in node_modules, can anyone please clarify?
I tried to stick to every issue opened everywhere.

1. Is webpack / babel-loader transpiling jsnext:main file?
2. If yes, is webpack / babel-loader transpiling jsnext:main file in node_modules even if node_modules is in exclude key?

My situation:

rules: [{
    test: /\.(js|mjs)$/i,
    exclude: [/node_modules/],
    use: [{
        loader: 'babel-loader', //settings specified in package.json
    },{
        loader: 'eslint-loader', //settings specified in package.json
    }
}]

In my dependency package.json I tried:

"main": "index.js", <= not working (not transpiled)
"jsnext:main": "index.js", <= not working (not transpiled)
"module": "index.js", <= not working (not transpiled)

Neither is working without removing exclude: [/node_modules/], but this can't be used in any medium-to-big sized project because of infinite compilation times.

But then: why is https://github.com/lodash/lodash/blob/es/package.json any different from my https://github.com/damianobarbati/react-create-app/blob/master/package.json?
lodash-es is getting transpiled even being in node_modules (and excluded) but my react-create-app is not: HELP!

webpack/webpack#2902

[danez]

babel-loader/babel is only transpiling what you tell it to transpile.

webpack is respecting the module field in package.json, but the definition of the module field is not to be ES2018, but rather parseable by node or browser except that it uses import/export. This is then used to do tree shaking in webpack, but not to transpile node_modules.

[sibelius]

can we have an option to enable transpiling all jsnext:main and module on node_modules?

[loganfsmyth]

@sibelius That is something you'd set up in your Webpack config, not as part of babel-loader.

[sibelius]

I think it makes sense to have something like this in a helper or as an option

[loganfsmyth]

@sibelius It is not something a loader can effect. Webpack decides how to process things like that, not Babel.