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Consider relaxing backwards compatibility stance #101
Description
The stance in this repo, as described in the readme - https://github.com/nodejs/cjs-module-lexer?tab=readme-ov-file#project-status is that only bug fixes and syntax updates will be landed but not new syntax cases, for the reason of backwards compatibility.
But, if we can backport fixes across Node.js releases, perhaps there is scope to allow a new phase of additional features, especially to match with the unflagging of require(esm) which represents a new step in Node.js compat behaviours.
I wanted to create this issue to open that discussion, and then to possibly consider some of the outstanding issues / PRs. I have limited time to work on these myself, but if there is a maintainer interested it could be worth considering.
Activity
BridgeAR commentedon Aug 29, 2026
I believe we will have to do this at some point, otherwise it is difficult to keep end users happy long term, since we will not detect all patterns for newly added syntax.
The main question is the how. We can in fact prepare such release one way or the other by having a new major and deciding, if we want to maintain an older release line at the same time. I personally do not think we will have to release on the older release line, if there is no bug fix needed.
Backporting a fix to all release lines will probably mostly be fine, since there should be few conflicts. Just older versions of the release line will still deviate. Older release lines might not get the change, we should just target a time window that allows it mostly.