Given the amount of work put into removing `require`-calls from the code-base, let's ensure that new ones aren't accidentally added in the future.
Note that we still have a couple of files where `require` is being used, in particular:
- The Node.js examples, however those will be updated to use `import` in PR 17081.
- The Webpack examples, and related support files, however I unfortunately don't know enough about Webpack to be able to update those. (Hopefully users of that code will help out here, once version `4` is released.)
- The `statcmp`-tool, since *some* of those `require`-calls cannot be converted to `import` without other code changes (and that file is only used during benchmarking).
Please find additional details at https://github.com/import-js/eslint-plugin-import/blob/main/docs/rules/no-commonjs.md
At this point in time all browsers, and also Node.js, support standard `import`/`export` statements and we can now finally consider outputting modern JavaScript modules in the builds.[1]
In order for this to work we can *only* use proper `import`/`export` statements throughout the main code-base, and (as expected) our Node.js support made this much more complicated since both the official builds and the GitHub Actions-based tests must keep working.[2]
One remaining issue is that the `pdf.scripting.js` file cannot be built as a JavaScript module, since doing so breaks PDF scripting.
Note that my initial goal was to try and split these changes into a couple of commits, however that unfortunately didn't really work since it turned out to be difficult for smaller patches to work correctly and pass (all) tests that way.[3]
This is a classic case of every change requiring a couple of other changes, with each of those changes requiring further changes in turn and the size/scope quickly increasing as a result.
One possible "issue" with these changes is that we'll now only output JavaScript modules in the builds, which could perhaps be a problem with older tools. However it unfortunately seems far too complicated/time-consuming for us to attempt to support both the old and modern module formats, hence the alternative would be to do "nothing" here and just keep our "old" builds.[4]
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[1] The final blocker was module support in workers in Firefox, which was implemented in Firefox 114; please see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/import#browser_compatibility
[2] It's probably possible to further improve/simplify especially the Node.js-specific code, but it does appear to work as-is.
[3] Having partially "broken" patches, that fail tests, as part of the commit history is *really not* a good idea in general.
[4] Outputting JavaScript modules was first requested almost five years ago, see issue 10317, and nowadays there *should* be much better support for JavaScript modules in various tools.
Using `require.resolve("worker-loader")` to check if `worker-loader` is installed causes webpack to include `worker-loader` in the output bundle, which is not the intended effect. Aside from increasing the bundle size unnecessarily, it also causes errors for webpack configs with targets that don't have node's built-in modules.
These errors can be fixed by configuring webpack `externals` to exclude `worker-loader`, but it's more difficult to figure out this solution than to figure out that `worker-loader` needs to be installed (even without this explicit error message).
To solve this, the explicit check for `worker-loader` has been removed. An alternative solution would be to use webpack's `resolveWeak`. Documentation has also been added in `examples/webpack` to help users.
Currently *all* users of `pdfjs-dist` are forced to install the `webpack` and `worker-loader` packages, despite the fact that they are *only* relevant if the `webpack.js` file is being used (with a custom Webpack build).
This really doesn't seem great, especially since those packages are the only remaining dependencies in the `pdfjs-dist` library, and it thus seem more reasonable overall that Webpack users handle those dependencies themselves.
To prevent unnecessarily cryptic runtime failures, when people update to newer `pdfjs-dist` versions, the `webpack.js` file was updated to explicitly check for the existence of the `worker-loader` package and error otherwise.
Furthermore, note that `webpack` was only listed as a dependency because of the `worker-loader` package itself (see issue 9248).
Obviously these changes may not be seen as great by Webpack users who rely on `pdfjs-dist`, since it forces them to handle the dependencies themselves, however it should improve things considerably for "general" users of `pdfjs-dist` by not burdening them with unnecessary dependencies.
These sort of changes are also in line with other recent changes, see PR 11418, which removed built-in fake worker loader code for specific JS builders/bundlers/frameworks. This work was prompted not only by a desire to simplify/clean-up old code, but also to lessen future support burden since the PDF.js contributors cannot be assumed to be experts in various JS bundlers.
Note that Prettier, purposely, has only limited [configuration options](https://prettier.io/docs/en/options.html). The configuration file is based on [the one in `mozilla central`](https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/.prettierrc) with just a few additions (to avoid future breakage if the defaults ever changes).
Prettier is being used for a couple of reasons:
- To be consistent with `mozilla-central`, where Prettier is already in use across the tree.
- To ensure a *consistent* coding style everywhere, which is automatically enforced during linting (since Prettier is used as an ESLint plugin). This thus ends "all" formatting disussions once and for all, removing the need for review comments on most stylistic matters.
Many ESLint options are now redundant, and I've tried my best to remove all the now unnecessary options (but I may have missed some).
Note also that since Prettier considers the `printWidth` option as a guide, rather than a hard rule, this patch resorts to a small hack in the ESLint config to ensure that *comments* won't become too long.
*Please note:* This patch is generated automatically, by appending the `--fix` argument to the ESLint call used in the `gulp lint` task. It will thus require some additional clean-up, which will be done in a *separate* commit.
(On a more personal note, I'll readily admit that some of the changes Prettier makes are *extremely* ugly. However, in the name of consistency we'll probably have to live with that.)
Despite this patch removing the `disableWorker` option itself, please note that we'll still fallback to loading the worker file(s) on the main-thread when running in environments without proper Web Worker support.
Furthermore it's still possible, even with this patch, to force the use of fake workers by manually loading the necessary file using a `<script>` tag on the main-thread.[1]
That way, the functionality of the now removed `SINGLE_FILE` build target and the resulting `build/pdf.combined.js` file can still be achieved simply by adding e.g. `<script src="build/pdf.worker.js"></script>` to the HTML (obviously with the path adjusted as needed).
Finally note that the `disableWorker` option is a performance footgun, and unfortunately many existing third-party examples actually use it without providing any sort of warning/justification.
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[1] This approach is used in the default viewer, since certain kind of debugging may be easier if the code is running directly on the main-thread.
