Rule proposal: no-native-addon-dependencies

[silverwind]

It is often desirable for portability and general stability to not have any native addons in the direct or indirect dependencies. If these cases could be detected reliably and fast, a rule could be created.

Fail

import 'node-sass'; /* error: module `node-sass` contains native addons */
import 'gulp-sass'; /* error: dependency `node-sass` of `gulp-sass` contains native addons */

Pass

import 'sass';
import 'gulp-dart-sass';

[papb]

Fantastic idea! How about no-platform-specific-imports?

[silverwind]

I think I still prefer the name no-native-import. For example, I have a module that has platform-specific functionality while still being pure JS.

[papb]

@silverwind ah, yes, of course. You're right 🤦 actually now that you say it, I see it's clearly not unusual for cross-platform modules to require platform specific code (so that they accomodate for each platform). Sorry for the noise 😅

[sindresorhus]

I would prefer no-native-addon-dependencies. The "import" word would not work as it's about indirect dependencies too.

[silverwind]

Terminology of "addons" seems good. It's also what Node uses in its docs.

[silverwind]

I do have to raise one argument against the rule: Some dependencies may never be imported and a linter rule would miss addons in those. For such cases a find node_modules -type f -name "*.node" would be more reliable.

[fisker]

This?

https://eslint.org/docs/rules/no-restricted-imports

[silverwind]

@fisker that's a simple denylist-based approach, the proposed rule would be more automatic in detection of native addons.

I actually think that unless there is a surefire way to detect native addons (require.resolve is not suitable because many modules have JS wrappers), the implementation would be too tricky and the proposal should probably be denied.

[sindresorhus]

I think this rule would be a better fit for https://github.com/mysticatea/eslint-plugin-node. I would recommend opening an issue there. The maintainer there might have some good idea on how to solve this.