Deno compatibility

[jgierer12]

Hi,

I came across JSPM while playing around with deno (a JS/TS runtime aiming for browser compatibility and high explicitness). First of all, great work on the project, this is almost exactly what I was looking for!

Unfortunately, there are some issues which make JSPM in its current state incompatible with deno's very strict import URL requirements, namely:

• root-relative URLs, which deno cannot resolve due to its caching system
• extensionless URLs, which deno deliberately doesn't support

Let's look at https://dev.jspm.io/react and see what should change in order to be compatible with deno:

• -import { dew } from "/npm:react@16.7.0/index.dew.js";
  +import { dew } from "https://dev.jspm.io/npm:react@16.7.0/index.dew.js"
   export default dew();

  Here, we simply need to replace the root-relative URL with the absolute one.

• -import "/npm:prop-types@15/checkPropTypes?dew";
  +import "https://dev.jspm.io/npm:prop-types@15/checkPropTypes.dew.js";

  In addition to absolute URL, we have to add the explicit file extension.

• -import "/npm:object-assign@4?dew";
  +import "https://dev.jspm.io//npm:object-assign@4<???>.js";

  This is where it gets tricky. As far as I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong), there is currently no way to get the contents of https://dev.jspm.io/npm:object-assign@4?dew with a file extension as required by deno.
  https://dev.jspm.io/npm:object-assign@4/index.js comes close, but exports the wrapped module instead of raw dew export. Perhaps it's possible to alias /npm:object-assign@4?dew to e.g. /npm:object-assign@4.dew.js and use that?

It would be amazing for JSPM to be compatible with deno, since the lack of compatible modules is currently one of my major pain points with it. I also think that the added explicitness is a benefit on its own, regardless of the deno compatibility.

[guybedford]

There would be nothing blocking this if denoland/deno#203 is fixed :)

[fusionstrings]

Is it still valid @jgierer12 @guybedford ? denoland/deno#203 is closed.

[guybedford]

Deno support could be added already simply using something like the browser-based Node.js shims, certainly.

Then better handling for the Node.js core packages could be added over time along the lines of https://github.com/denolib/node.

[guybedford]

Let's move tracking of Deno support to #50.