three/addons alias

[CodyJasonBennett]

Describe the feature you'd like:

Since r144 (mrdoob/three.js#23406), three.js supports a three/addons alias that would currently redirect to three/examples/jsm.

For instance, the following resolve to the same file:

import { GLTFLoader } from 'three/addons/loaders/GLTFLoader.js'
import { GLTFLoader } from 'three/examples/jsm/loaders/GLTFLoader.js'

Suggested implementation:

TypeScript doesn't recognize the above behavior since the alias is currently handled through package.exports and types only exist for examples/jsm on disk (this might be something to check in TypeScript upstream). We can implement this by copying examples/jsm to addons at build-time if there's no easy way to alias as a library.

You can work-around this in user-land with:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "paths": {
      "three/addons/*": ["./node_modules/three/examples/jsm/*"]
    }
  }
}

[Methuselah96]

I think TypeScript will correctly perform the alias if we add the exports field to the package.json of @types/three. I've created #340 to do just that and it seems to work for me in my local testing (i.e., TypeScript lets me import three/addons/controls/OrbitControls.js). I'm hoping DefinitelyTyped will preserve the field when publishing the types, but we might have to try it to find out.

[Methuselah96]

Did some testing, and this won't work until we add file extensions to imports, which is waiting on DefinitelyTyped to support imports with file extensions without having to add them to OTHER_FILES.