“Cannot find module” in browserify when not mangling the bundle

Question

I have a custom library I'm trying to build with Browserify. The library uses fabric.js , extends it with some custom classes and exposes it globally to be used in the browser and in node.js. This is the main entry point for the library:

(function () {
    "use strict";

    // Make fabric global in browsers and node
    this.fabric = require('./libs/fabric.canvasex.js');
    this.fabric.internal_version = "1.0.0";

    require('./libs/BoundedText/BoundedText.js');
    require('./libs/BoundedText/PathText/PathIText.js');
    require('./libs/VectorPlaceholder/fabricVectorPlaceholder.js');
    require('./libs/ImagePlaceholder/fabricImagePlaceholder.js');

}).call(this);

The file structure for this library is this:

To build this library to a single file I'm using this command:

browserify --full-paths js/main.js | uglifyjs --compress --mangle safari10 > dist/my-lib.js

This works great and I can include this in browser and require it in node.js and it becomes a global variable too which is what I need. The problem starts when I have to debug something and the minified code is obviously not ideal for this so I bundle the library like this instead:

browserify --full-paths js/main.js > dist/my-lib.js

Now, when I try to include this build in another node program using browserify too, like this:

require('./customily-fabric.js');

I get these errors when bundling my program with the library:

[1] Error: Cannot find module '../fabric.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'
[1] Error: Cannot find module './OpentypeIText.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'      
[1] Error: Cannot find module './startsWith-polyfill.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'
[1] Error: Cannot find module './Font.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'
[1] Error: Cannot find module '../../fabric.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'
[1] Error: Cannot find module './ctxtextpath.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'        
[1] Error: Cannot find module './path-properties.min.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'
[1] Error: Cannot find module '../potrace.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'
[1] Error: Cannot find module './fabricMaskFilter.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'   
[1] Error: Cannot find module './fabric.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'
[1] Error: Cannot find module './libs/BoundedText/BoundedText.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'
[1] Error: Cannot find module './libs/BoundedText/PathText/PathIText.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'
[1] Error: Cannot find module './libs/VectorPlaceholder/fabricVectorPlaceholder.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'
[1] Error: Cannot find module './libs/ImagePlaceholder/fabricImagePlaceholder.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'
[1] Error: Cannot find module './libs/fabric.canvasex.js' from 'D:\Git-Repos\Customily\CustomilyFabric\dist'

I discovered that if I remove only the --mangle option from my library build, I get these errors when trying to include it in another node program. Why is this happening? Shouldn't all the modules be contained inside the bundle?

Answer 1

After some more searching, I finally found the reason, when using browserify you can't add libraries that were bundled with browserify, see this issue.

This feature is coming in browserify 17 so, for now, I switched to webpack to build my library.