Avoid circular dependencies in SemVer

[sam-b-rose]

Problem

Consumers using bundlers like Rollup or Webpack are hitting a circular dependency error coming from npm/node-semver. This is causing the SemVer,satisfies function to always return false when bundled, resulting in the following error:

What this PR is doing

A circular dependency between the Range and Comparator classes can cause issues for consumers who are trying to bundle extensions with vscode-languageclient as a dependency.

See related GitHub issue from npm/node-semver

• [BUG] the package isn't compatible with Rollup due to require cycle #381

Using Rollup to bundle VS Code extension

When importing all of SemVer	When only importing individual functions
	No circular deps and the extension works! ✨ Tested in external project using yalc

Verified the build output of client/lib/node/main.js is correctly importing only the needed functions, avoiding the circular dependency:

// client/lib/node/main.js

const semverParse = require("semver/functions/parse");
const semverSatisfies = require("semver/functions/satisfies");

[dbaeumer]

@samrose3 I see the problem but I am not a fan of merging this in since it puts me at the mercy of the semver directory layout. IMO this should be addressed in semver directly. Wouldn't it make more sense to provide a PR there?

[sam-b-rose]

I did look into making the fix in npm/node-semver first. However, it looks like it has been discussed quite a bit but no clear path forward on how to avoid the circular dependency given the current architecture between the Range and Comparator classes.

It does look like these are officially supported function paths provided by semver as documented in the Usage section. Seems reasonable that we could rely on these require paths only changing on a major update. And perhaps the circular dependencies in SemVer could be fixed by then if they do 🤞

Related discussion around circular dep issues in semver:

• [BUG] the package isn't compatible with Rollup due to require cycle npm/node-semver#381
• commonjs: v19.0.0 breaks semver package rollup/plugins#879
• [BUG] Circular Dependency between comparator.js and range.js npm/node-semver#318

[sam-b-rose]

Hi @dbaeumer! Just following up on this 👋

Given that accessing the semverParse and semverSatisfies functions are part of the supported usage for the node-semver package, would it be alright to merge this fix in? I feel pretty confident it is safe using these function paths.

For more context, we are using vscode-languageclient in a VS Code extension. We are needing to bundle node modules with our extension and are using Rollup for all our monorepo package builds.

I have tested this change and verified that it only pulls in the small parts of semver needed for the checkVersion function and allows Rollup to properly tree-shake the dependency. This also results in a smaller bundle size for us (the consumer of vscode-languageclient which is another win 🎉

Any other concerns I can help address? I've tried resolving the circular dep issue within node-semver but it is unfortunately a much bigger refactor than I have the context to solve :(

[sam-b-rose]

Just checking in, wanting to poke this along if possible 😄 any reconsideration to using the individual function imports for SemVer rather than the full package?

This would avoid the circular dep occurring in SemVer and improve the bundle size for those bundling vscode-languageclient in their package.

[dbaeumer]

I looked at the semver documentation and they indeed advocate using the functions directly. Hope that keep that stable as well :-).