feat: support for CommonJS

[wellwelwel]

Hi, team 🙌

I would like to propose a compilation of index.js to make the project compatible with CommonJS, without changing the code or the supported versions (e.g, Node.js v18).

Consider it as wip.

Why?

From Node.js v23, an experimental feature (support for loading ES Module in require()) has been added, which brings up the following error for any command executed from npm:

(node:16132) ExperimentalWarning: CommonJS module <***>/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/debug/src/node.js is loading ES Module <***>/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/supports-color/index.js using require().
Support for loading ES Module in require() is an experimental feature and might change at any time
(Use `node --trace-warnings ...` to show where the warning was created)

• This warning comes up with a simple npm ls, npm i or npm view npm version, for example.

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The changes

The real changes were made to the package.json, where the new index.cjs file was automatically generated by the npm run build:cjs script (I used esbuild because it's dependency-free — it could be any compiler).

From a certain point of view, this PR could also be considered as a fix rather than a feature:

• fix: support for Node.js v23 without experimental resources

Important

As there is no workflow that automates publishing, it's important to note that the compilation of index.cjs is done manually.

If we create a workflow to automate the publication, the index.cjs would become dispensable from the commit and could be compiled during the CI (which is my personal preference).

Note

I noticed that 4 tests were failing, but I didn't touch them or the main file (index.js).
It would be a pleasure to help with the correction of these tests if necessary.

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Related

Some key issues, comments and PRs.

• Who depends on support-color using require():
  • debug causes npm to always issue an experimental ESM warning in node 23 debug-js/debug#975
• When the warning was introduced:
  • module: include module information in require(esm) warning nodejs/node#55397
• When the warning was issued:
  • 2024-10-16, Version 23.0.0 (Current) nodejs/node#55338 (comment)
• A closed PR trying to fix this from npm (CLI) side:
  • fix: downgrade supports-color to same version as chalk npm/cli#7887 (comment)

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CC

!@sindresorhus, @Qix-, @ljharb, @mantoni (and all the community), it would be great if we could discuss this or, perhaps, an alternative approach 🤝

[LitoMore]

Better to ignore the .cjs file from Git. You can add the npm run build to prepublishOnly script.

And the .cjs distribution file needs to be tested.

[sindresorhus]

No thanks. We don't plan to bring back CommonJS support.