Fixing broken require: require('util') -> require('../utils')

[ZackMFleischman]

Description

In the file lib/nodejs/NodejsStreamOutputAdapter.js, it trying to require util, but really wanted to pull in ../utils.

This likely fell through the cracks because the only place this file is required in the code, it's wrapped in a try/catch clause where the catch resolves to a no-op.

It's worth noting that this was causing my project to break when using webpack, as webpack tries to go in and follow all the require statements and bundle everything up, but it would hit this and break.

[dduponchel]

No, we really try to load util, provided by the nodejs runtime.
What's your webpack configuration ? It looks like you try to use nodejs streams while excluding global modules.

[ZackMFleischman]

@dduponchel Hey!

So apparently my webpack configuration was accidentally overwriting Node's util with our own 'util' alias and that was mucking up the works. I changed that and everything works hunky-dory.

Having said that though, I would still recommend merging this PR for the following reason:

NodejsStreamOutputAdapter.js is the only place in the whole repo where you pull in Node's util module directly. Every other module pulls in your own lib/utils.js module.

This module also has the inherits function (the only thing that NodejsStreamOutputAdapter.js actually uses from the module), and in fact, NodejsStreamOutputAdapter.js's sister file NodejsStreamInputAdapter.js does nearly precisely the same thing but uses lib/utils.js.

You can compare the code here:

// NodejsStreamOutputAdapter.js 
var util = require('util');
util.inherits(NodejsStreamOutputAdapter, Readable);

vs

// NodejsStreamInputAdapter.js 
var utils = require('../utils');
    ...
utils.inherits(NodejsStreamInputAdapter, GenericWorker);

Admittedly, it's a minor issue, and the code works the same regardless, but three cheers for code consistency? :)

[dduponchel]

I used util instead of ./utils because our inherits implementation is meant to be "good enough for our use cases". I feared edge cases were our implementation and nodejs' differ, leading to hard-to-debug issues. I also assumed util would always be available :-)
Both generate correct results in our tests on nodejs 0.10 -> 7.5, so that doesn't seem that risky.

What do you think of it ?

[ZackMFleischman]

I think if you fear edge cases where your implementations differ then you should use Node's util.inherits everywhere in your codebase.

If you decide that your implementation is good enough for your use cases, then use your home rolled version everywhere.

Personally, your home rolled version is quite simple, and if something big changes, I don't imagine it will be as hard to debug as you imagine, and you could always switch over later. I think it's not particularly a big deal either way, but I think you should use 1 or the other throughout your codebase for consistencies sake.

[dduponchel]

@ZackMFleischman sorry, I though I merged this pull request two weeks ago...

[ZackMFleischman]

Woot!