SyntaxError: Unexpected token import on webpack build

[kahibalo01]

Hello, I'm not sure if it is okay to ask here, I've looked everywhere and cannot find the answer.

Running webpack --mode production gives me no errors on my machine.
But on a colleague's machine, it spits out this error:

<omitted-path>/node_modules/webpack/bin/webpack.js:82
		import(path.resolve(path.dirname(pkgPath), pkg.bin[cli.binName])).catch(
		^^^^^^

SyntaxError: Unexpected token import
    at createScript (vm.js:80:10)
    at Object.runInThisContext (vm.js:139:10)
    at Module._compile (module.js:617:28)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:664:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:566:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (module.js:506:12)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:498:3)
    at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:694:10)
    at startup (bootstrap_node.js:204:16)
    at bootstrap_node.js:625:3

node version: 16.16.0
npm version: 8.11.0

package.json:

{
  "name": "azaark",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "description": "description",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "webpack --mode production"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "engines": {
    "node": "^16.20.0"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "css-loader": "^7.1.2",
    "mini-css-extract-plugin": "^2.9.1",
    "sass": "^1.77.8",
    "sass-loader": "^16.0.1",
    "ts-loader": "^9.5.1",
    "typescript": "^5.5.4",
    "webpack": "^5.94.0",
    "webpack-cli": "^5.1.4"
  }
}

We've checked if we have the same node and npm versions, and reinstalled those using nvm, cleaned npm cache, node_modules, and package-lock, but to no avail. We've also tried npm install from a fresh project, nada.

It would really help if you can point me to the right direction. I'm pretty lost here.

[alexander-akait]

please run node -v

[kahibalo01]

v16.16.0
This is the version on both machines: the one working and the one that gets this error.

[kahibalo01]

It seems the dynamic "import()" is not recognized for some reason.

In fact, I'm not even sure why it is entering that block. Tracing the code, the pkg.type and pkg.bin conditions should have been false on the environment. This is the conditional on webpack.js:

    if (pkg.type === "module" || /\.mjs/i.test(pkg.bin[cli.binName])) {
        import(path.resolve(path.dirname(pkgPath), pkg.bin[cli.binName])).catch(
	    err => {
		console.error(err);
		process.exitCode = 1;
	    }
        );
    } else {
	require(path.resolve(path.dirname(pkgPath), pkg.bin[cli.binName]));
    }

[alexander-akait]

Can you create reprducible test repo?