oclif incompatible with inquirer 9 - prompting guide broken

[Peter-Piper]

Describe the bug
Disclaimer: I'm unsure which of the projects actually contains this bug, but here goes.

I'm trying out oclif version oclif/3.1.2 darwin-x64 node-v18.7.0 following the documentation on prompts.

I've copied line by line from the example in the docs installing inquirer and types defs for version 9.1.0.
This results in a whole sequence of issues:

1. First issue I encounter is that ".prompt" doesn't exist on inquirer
   This is solved by replacing the import statement from import * as inquirer from 'inquirer' to import inquirer from 'inquirer'

However, changing the import statement followed by a yarn prepack results in the following error

$ yarn prepack
yarn run v1.22.17
$ yarn build && oclif manifest && oclif readme
$ shx rm -rf dist && tsc -b
    Error Plugin: admin-cli: require() of ES Module /Users/peterp/NSS/grid/scripts/admin/admin-cli/node_modules/inquirer/lib/inquirer.js from /Users/peterp/NSS/grid/scripts/admin/admin-cli/dist/commands/cellinfo/upload.js not
     supported.
    Instead change the require of inquirer.js in /Users/peterp/NSS/grid/scripts/admin/admin-cli/dist/commands/cellinfo/upload.js to a dynamic import() which is available in all CommonJS modules.
    Code: ERR_REQUIRE_ESM
error Command failed with exit code 1.
info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation about this command.

Inquirer is a pure ESM project since version 9.

I tried following the typescript guide on how to convert from commonjs til module, however this introduces a whole range of other issues with the entire project

My current solution is to roll back to inquirer@8 and @types/inquirer@8. But that prevents any future patches from inquirer and all of the cool inquirer plugins :-(

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Follow the official oclif prompting guide https://oclif.io/docs/prompting

Expected behavior
It should work with inquirer.js 9+

Environment (please complete the following information):

• OS & version: macOS Big Sur 11.6.8
• Shell/terminal & version: zsh 5.8 (x86_64-apple-darwin20.0)
• oclif version: oclif/3.1.2 darwin-x64 node-v18.7.0
• node version: v18.7.0
• inquirer v9.1.0

[jbournonville]

Any news on that issue ?

[himerus]

Seeing the same thing as I attempt to use the latest version of inquirer with oclif. Revering inquirer back to 8.x works as it has in other of my projects/tests.

[motabass]

The reason is, pretty sure, that inquirer moved to ESM: https://github.com/SBoudrias/Inquirer.js/releases/tag/inquirer%409.0.0

I also struggle to move our cli to ESM to make the latest inquirer work, and also zx which also uses ESM since v5: https://github.com/google/zx/releases/tag/5.0.0

Any help or guide on how to migrate a CLI project to ES Modules would be highly appreciated, especially when aslo using typescript.

#256 seems also to talk about that topic

[deprosun]

I was facing the below issue

Cannot find module './lib/screen-manager.mjs'

and had to resolve also by rolling back to inquirer@8 and @types/inquirer@8

[AutomationD]

1 year, guide is still broken.

Adding package version to the guide would mitigate this issue.

[cristiand391]

Hey all, sorry we missed this issue.

As pointed above, inquirer fully moved to ESM in v9. The current example works in an ESM plugin but we added a new one for CJS CLIs that still want to use latest inquirer:
https://oclif.io/docs/prompting#inquirer