Skip to content

Consider preventing the use of Node.js built-in modules and globals by default #127

@Mrtenz

Description

@Mrtenz

Most modules we develop need to be browser-compatible. The use of Node.js built-in modules means that some kind of polyfill is required for those modules. Usually this means using polyfills like crypto-browserify (hasn't been updated in years, and the bundle is quite large), buffer, etc., while there are often better alternatives available that have a much smaller bundle size (e.g., the noble and scure libraries), which offer compatibility with both Node.js and browsers by default.

Working with Uint8Array and bigint instead of Buffer and BN.js is quite easy now, since we have a lot of util functions in @metamask/utils. Most other Buffer-specific functions, like writeUint...() can be replaced with a DataView (available on browsers and Node.js). See MetaMask/key-tree#83 for example.

For that reason I propose we add some ESLint rules that prevent the use of built-in Node.js modules (mainly crypto), and Node.js-specific globals (mainly Buffer).

There are some valid use-cases for using Node.js built-in modules (like Node.js-only modules interacting with the file system), but projects needing it can simply remove or disable those rules.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions