Multiple re2 installations, should be a peer dependency

[katlim-br]

Hello

We found an error because we are using this library, and url-regex-safe at the same time, and both link to node-re2 library.

So when we run jest, we find a malloc issue. See this repo we created https://github.com/blastradius-ai/re2-malloc-error.

The solution would be to put re2 as a peer-dependency, like url-regex-safe has done it in its latest version (https://github.com/spamscanner/url-regex-safe/releases/tag/v3.0.0).

So that way we would have to install re2 ourselves, and only a single instance is created.

Hope this can be done, or if you want we can create a PR for that.

Thanks

[eliottvincent]

Hey there, thanks for the report!
I'll apply the necessary changes and release a new version of the lib.

[eliottvincent]

Ok so I understand the setting re2 as a peer dependency here as well would definitely fix the issue, however I don't plan to do so.
By reading the npm docs, I see that the behavior of peer dependencies is different across npm versions:

npm versions 1, 2, and 7 will automatically install peerDependencies if they are not explicitly depended upon higher in the dependency tree. For npm versions 3 through 6, you will receive a warning that the peerDependency is not installed instead.

This is quite an issue as I don't want to force host projects using this library to set re2 as a dependency. Peer dependencies were introduced to answer the use-case of plugins (https://nodejs.org/es/blog/npm/peer-dependencies/#the-problem-plugins), which is not the scope here in my opinion.

Furthermore, I see that the url-regex-safe lib has been updated and that it fixes your issue.
So I think it's safe to close this issue. Feel free to re-open the issue if needed.

[katlim-br]

Indeed, you are right, our case was fixed but having two or more dependencies using node-re2 could be likely at some point, and it would hinder the usage of either library.

Probably then node-re2 has to fix this, i saw in that issue that the author was removing global state, which is highly probable the cause of this.

[eliottvincent]

Agreed, but yes in any case it's the responsibility of node-re2 to fix the underlying issue.