Convert module system from CommonJS to ESM

[revosw]

Convert module system from CommonJS to ESM

[cressie176]

Hi @revosw,

Thank you for your offer of converting both Rascal and amqplib to ESM, and also for discussing your proposal in advance. My starting point is that I would be reluctant to maintain two branches of either amqplib or rascal, and also reluctant to increase minimum Node.js version for amqlib due to it's substantial user base. I'm less concerned about rascal though - is it possible to update one and not the other?

That said, I'm not very familiar with ESM yet, so it would be helpful to understand the benefits and whether there are any other implications. In my limited experience the other general considerations when converting modules are...

• A type field needs to be added to the package.json
• Modules must be imported using the full file path including the file extension
• Modules must be imported using the import keyword and not require
• Dynamic imports are asynchronous (I think this might be solved in Node 20)
• The require cache is no longer a thing

I'm not aware of the benefits, particularly for backend code. I'll do a bit of reading, but it's always good to hear from someone directly too.

[cressie176]

A bit more conversation here - #721

Closing as inviable due to node version compatibility.