Call for Contributors: Setting up imports & exports conditions definitions repo

[guybedford]

Posting here as spillover from the discussion in nodejs/node#40708 where it's been justifiably blocked for Node.js to define the "deno" condition in its documentation.

As a result there is a need for a community resource that maintains the environment resolution conditions definitions in a way that can be maintained as a well-defined definition registry over time.

Effectively taking this section from the docs - https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v17.x/docs/api/packages.html#conditions-definitions, and moving it into an external shared resource with proper process around how conditions can be defined and shared widely.

Once set up, we can then remove that section from the Node.js documentation and link to the shared community repo being maintained from the Node.js docs as the primary home of these definitions.

We need volunteers though to help set up process and maintenance around this effort. We could possibly arrange initial meetings etc as needed to get to a point where things are running smoothly.

Please comment here if you would like to contribute to this effort and assist in getting a process set up to ensure this can be well-maintained. I think we would need at least two other people to volunteer to assist to move this effort forward.

[GeoffreyBooth]

cc @nodejs/modules @nodejs/loaders

[DerekNonGeneric]

Agreed that this would need to be a joint development effort.

I can contribute tests for a few runtimes and am aware of at least two OpenJS runtimes not yet listed.

[wooorm]

Should Node.js still impose some restrictions on which keywords are allowed as conditions, and perhaps what data is attached to them?
A similar example exists in the HTML standard, for values that can be used as rel on <a>, <area>, and <link>: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/links.html#other-link-types. HTML defines some values, links to where other values are “maintained”, plus describes what data they should have attached to them there (e.g., status).

[DerekNonGeneric]

Whatever gets done, gets done. Whatever doesn't get done, doesn't get done. Maintaining a list or some data structure as you describe sounds interesting…