Why is the installation of Babel failing in Electron? And do I need Babel or not?

Question

I want to use the npm package https://www.npmjs.com/package/swipe-detect and get the following error message

export default function(target, callback, threshold=150) {
^^^^^^

SyntaxError: Unexpected token export
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:776:23)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:851:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:701:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:633:12)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:625:3)
    at Module.require (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:739:19)
    at require (internal/modules/cjs/helpers.js:14:16)
    at Object.<anonymous> (C:\Users\folder\main.js:22:22)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:839:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:851:10)

I found out that the error is because this is the ES6 syntax. So I've been trying to install babel according to this tutorial. https://www.robinwieruch.de/minimal-node-js-babel-setup/ , but I get an error message

npm WARN deprecated @babel/polyfill@7.4.4: 🚨 As of Babel 7.4.0, this
npm WARN deprecated package has been deprecated in favor of directly
npm WARN deprecated including core-js/stable (to polyfill ECMAScript
npm WARN deprecated features) and regenerator-runtime/runtime
npm WARN deprecated (needed to use transpiled generator functions):
npm WARN deprecated
npm WARN deprecated   > import "core-js/stable";
npm WARN deprecated   > import "regenerator-runtime/runtime";

I also tried several other tutorials and set the environment in .babelrc. The error message still pops up.

Now I read that babel is already included in Electron. Why is Babel needed in an Electron project .

I've been searching for two days now and can't find a solution. Why does this error pop up?

Answer 1

Depending on your Electron/Node version, using the --experimental-modules argument may be enough to get it working. (However there may be issues when you try to package your app .)

See https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/12011 for some background on using ES modules in Electron. There appear to be various workarounds suggested in that thread.

(Given that the library you want is only 100 lines , and under a nice liberal MIT license, it might be easier to just clone it, drop the default at the end of that file, and simply export the class.)