[JS] The package.json file incorrectly specifies sideEffects: false

[nrabinowitz]

Describe the bug, including details regarding any error messages, version, and platform.

Problem

When building a Node application with Webpack, calls to RecordBatchStreamWriter.toNodeStream fail with the error:

Error: "toNodeStream" not available in this environment

Cause

The apache-arrow package.json file specifies "sideEffects": false, but the Node overrides required for streaming Arrow files are applied as a side effect. I believe this is true for the DOM overrides as well.

Suggested Fix

I haven't tested this, but I think that wrapping the overrides in these two files in an IIFE as is done here will fix this issue in the Webpack build.

Component(s)

JavaScript

[domoritz]

Good catch. Do you have an idea how we can test this to make sure we are doing the right fix and don't break it again?

[nrabinowitz]

Good catch. Do you have an idea how we can test this to make sure we are doing the right fix and don't break it again?

I am not sure what a good test would be here. I think a minimally-reproducible case might be to build a simple script like

import {RecordBatchStreamWriter} from 'apache-arrow';
new RecordBatchStreamWriter().toNodeStream();

using WebPack, and then run the result and assert that exit code is 0. But this is admittedly painful to put into a CI test suite. If you're interested in a test like this, I could put together the example for you.

[domoritz]

We already have bundler tests in https://github.com/apache/arrow/blob/b522f8c5cc152ea97d33340e3bef852e063dad46/js/test/bundle, actually. They are run in https://github.com/apache/arrow/blob/b522f8c5cc152ea97d33340e3bef852e063dad46/js/gulp/bundle-task.js and we already run the bundle in https://github.com/apache/arrow/blob/b522f8c5cc152ea97d33340e3bef852e063dad46/js/gulp/bundle-task.js#L129. It would be great if you could put together a sample script that we ca add to the bundle folder.

[nrabinowitz]

new RecordBatchStreamWriter().toNodeStream();

Apologies for the delay here. I've added a failing test in this PR: apache/arrow#39953

Let me know if there's anything else I can do to support this fix.

[domoritz]

I'm pretty swamped with things right now and we won't ship a fix until the next release (arrow 16) anyway so I'll put it in my queue.

I think the approach of setting side effects in package.json is not good since it blows up bundle sizes so we should look into initializing in a class.

[ilijapuaca]

Hey @domoritz, is there an ETA on when a patch for this may be available? It sounds like it's not considered worthy a new release, is there any timeline on v16 being published? Just wondering as this is kind of a blocker for some of our work due to no workaround being available when using esbuild.

Appreciate all the help!

[domoritz]

All arrow packages I'm this repo are released together every three months.

This is an important issue but I haven't found a solution yet.