how to exclude nested node_module folders from a loader in webpack

Question

Will the following exclude: '/node_modules/' only exclude the node_modules folder in the same directory, or will it also exclude the nested node_module folders? If not: how can I adjust it to exclude all the node_module folders?

module: {
    loaders: [
        { test: /\.ts$/, loader: 'ts-loader',exclude: '/node_modules/' } 
    ]
},

Filestructure:

/general
/node_modules
/mod1
     /src
     /node_modules
/mod2
     /src
     /node_modules

Sarraceniaceous

Answer 1

The documentation says that

A condition may be a RegExp, a string containing the absolute path, a function(absPath): bool, or an array of one of these combined with “and”.

So based on that you could try to build a RegExp to fit your case.

Personally I prefer to use include over exclude as a whitelist is easier to maintain than a blacklist. At least you have stronger control this way.

Following this line of thought you could skip exclude problem altogether and build a rule like this:

include: [
    path.resolve(__dirname, 'general'),
    path.resolve(__dirname, 'mod1/src'),
    path.resolve(__dirname, 'mod2/src')
]

Of course if you have more complicated structure maybe you'll end up doing a combination of both. One rule to exclude node_modules and one rule to include the directories you want to look into.

Leaves

This is the example the documentation was missing. Awkwardly, neither DevDocs nor the official documentation made it straightforward to search for include usage. Thanks for this example using an Array. – Engaged

Answer 2

If your issue is only with TypeScript files, you can take advantage of the fact that 'ts-loader' will use your tsconfig.json file upon compiling. You can define paths you want to exclude right there instead.

Yakutsk