packager confused with RxJS which requires Node's EventEmitter

[staltz]

I'm experimenting with using Cycle with React Native. Cycle depends on RxJS's npm package, which in turn requires Node's 'events' package, which I suppose does not exist in whatever environment React Native is running in.

The consequence is a runtime error Requiring unknown module "events". Cycle uses browserify, and the resulting bundle does not contain the RxJS code which requires 'events', that's why this runtime error does not happen with Cycle running in browsers.

I see some possible actions to solve this:

• Make packager work more like browserify, using the same solutions.
• packager warning, instead of runtime error, for unknown modules required.
• RxJS's npm package should not have Node-specific functions, but instead put those in a special purpose rx.node.js helper library. cc @mattpodwysocki

I believe this issue affects not only Cycle, but any time anyone attempts to use RxJS together with React Native.

[vjeux]

There's a npm package called events which is the exact same code as node's events. https://www.npmjs.com/package/events

I wonder what happens if you add the events dependency on node, does it use node's one or does it use the npm installed one?

[staltz]

Well, that works. :P
Feel free to close this issue since I made also Reactive-Extensions/RxJS#639, let's see how that one goes.

[vjeux]

I really want to make sure to find a good solution for sharing code between node, browser and react native. This would suck to lose all those great libraries just because we're using a slightly different but incompatible system.

The idea of bundling all the node modules by default like browserify is not out of the question, but I really don't want React Native to be in the game of keeping those libraries up to date with node/io and all the dependency management that it entails.

[jlmitch5]

Thanks for filing this issue. I am attempting to combine the flux todomvc tutorial with react-native, and I ran into this issue. +1 for including modules from node core...somehow :)

[amasad]

packager warning, instead of runtime error, for unknown modules required.

We should really do that. Actually the packager does a ton of debug warnings, the reason it doesn't throw errors is probably a historic one. I'll look into it.

[amasad]

This is now fixed that we look at the browser field in the package.json. Tested using:

var Rx = require('rx');
var obs = Rx.Observable.of(42);
obs.forEach(function (x) { alert(x); });

[abbothzhang]

m