Build-in support to create aliases to import or require modules would be very helpful

[doberkofler]

I currently evaluating the migration of a very very lange and complex webpack configuration to esbuild.
I have found some esbuild plugins but was not able to get things working and believe that build-in support for aliases similar to resolve.alias in webpack or paths in TypeScript would be a very helpful addition.

[evanw]

Yes, I agree. However, esbuild actually does support paths in tsconfig.json. It's respected in both TypeScript and JavaScript files while bundling.

[doberkofler]

@evanw Interesting, but I'm not sure I fully understand. I would prefer to just rely use the build-in features but noticed, that esbuild did automatically resolve the TypeScript modules but not the css modules. Is this this the expected behavior or should also the css modules be resolved? Please also note, that I created a separate SR #2192 that specifically focuses on the module resolution when chaining plugins. Thank you for your awesome work.

[doberkofler]

I also noticed that for example the dataurl loader needed to import image resources does not resolve accordingto the paths in tsconfig.json and does also not observe the alias set in the plugin esbuild-plugin-alias.

[maor-benami77]

It it supported only when bundling?
What about using esm without bundling?
The paths stay the same

[jsejcksn]

I just saw this mentioned in the latest release notes.

@evanw How is it different from / advantageous over supporting standard import maps?