Require node modules from Opal

[wied03]

Currently, you cannot require node modules from Opal without using back ticks or JS syntax. (see Requires under README).

What would also need to happen, is to monkey patch the Opal compiler to allow the following:

some_module = require_node 'something'
some_module.js_function

This would be a variant of the call node. That would under the hood become a webpack require that gets assigned to the some_module variable and Opal would not try to find it as an Opal module. It could even do the JS syntax under the hood so that you can call methods, etc. on it easily (see 2nd line above).

[wied03]

@cj - This is already present in Opal's stdlib. See nodejs/kernel.rb and usage of it in nodejs/file.rb.

[wied03]

@cj - Never mind. 1) we can't load all the node stuff in there because it will throw off the phantomJS stuff in the test. 2) More importantly, the stdlib require is runtime. We need a compile time 'require' for webpack to pick up.

[cj]

Would there be a similar issue doing #2 or would it be simpler as you're just converting #= require foo to %x{require('foo')}? I'm using %x because it won't let me escape ` lol

[wied03]

I think this should be quite different than #2. #2 would scan source code to do that. This, to be robust, really needs to be compiler driven. Not hard though (probably 5-10 lines of code) + the tests. Just isn't as high on my individual priority list.