Expose current import map in Deno as readonly

[hazae41]

Related issue #12213 explains that we can't have a dynamic import map because of WICG standards

But can't we expose the current import map in Deno as readonly?

This would be a game changer for libraries that manage import maps:

• https://deno.land/x/importmap@0.2.0
• importmap command alephjs/aleph.js#155

e.g. Deno.imports

{ 
  path: "import_map.json",
  value: { 
    imports: { ... },
    scopes: { ... }
  }
}

[bartlomieju]

AFAIK there are no plans in the standard for introspection of import map and thus I'm not in favor of adding non-standard APIs for this purpose.

What are concrete use cases for such API?

[hazae41]

For example, at Aleph.js we are designing a tool to manage imports from the CLI.

Currently, it needs to either:

• use the default import_map.json
• use an extra configuration to define the import map url

Deno.imports.url would solve this, so we could just use the current import map

After that, we need to read it and parse it, so it requires read permission.
If the tool just wants to check updates, it would at least require read permission.

Deno.imports.value would solve this, so we don't need to ask for read permission.

We could also use imports to better analyse the code and dependency graph, issue warnings, polyfill, etc.

[bartlomieju]

Thanks for listing those. Still unless there's a specification allowing introspection I'm not in favor of adding a specialized API for that. I think having an explicit configuration option is the best way to solve this at the moment.