luau/rfcs/require-by-string-aliases.md

Require by String with Aliases

Summary

We need to add intuitive alias functionality to facilitate the grouping together of related Luau files into libraries and allow for future package managers to be developed and integrated easily.

Motivation

The Roblox engine does not currently support require-by-string. One motivation for this RFC is to consolidate require syntax and functionality between the Roblox engine and the broader Luau language itself.

Luau itself currently supports a basic require-by-string syntax that allows for requiring Luau modules by relative or absolute path. Unfortunately, the current implementation does not support aliases.

Package management

While package management itself is outside of the scope of this RFC, we want to make it possible for a package management solution to be developed in a way that integrates well with our require syntax.

To require a Luau module under the current implementation, we must require it either by relative or absolute path:

-- Requiring Roact by absolute path
local Roact = require("C:/LuauModules/Roact-v1.4.2")

If we wanted to change the location of this package on disk, we would have to modify all files that require the old path above, which essentially boils down to manual package management. This approach is tedious and prone to mistakes.

To solve this, we introduce alias configuration in this RFC, which would allow for future package management software to maintain package paths and versions by directly modifying configuration files.

This would also create simple and readable require statements for developers.

-- Suppose "@src" is an alias for the same directory as "../../../../../"

-- Instead of this:
local result = require("../../../../../HelperModules/graphing")

-- We could have this:
local result = require("@src/HelperModules/graphing")

Design

Aliases

Aliases can be used to bind an absolute or relative path to a convenient, case-sensitive name that can be required directly.

"aliases": {
    "Roact": "C:/LuauModules/Roact-v1.4.2"
}

Based on the alias map above, you would be able to require Roact directly:

local Roact = require("Roact")

Or even a sub-module:

local createElement = require("Roact/createElement")

Aliases are overrides. Whenever the first component of a path exactly matches a pre-defined alias, it will be replaced before the path is resolved to a file.

Versioning

Aliases are simple bindings and aren't concerned with versioning. The intention is to allow package management software to leverage aliases by automatically adding and updating the alias map to reflect a package's dependencies. For manual versioning, a user could always "version" their aliases: @MyModule-v1, @MyModule-v2, etc.

Library root alias

In the past, it has been proposed to define an alias (e.g. "@") to represent the root directory of a file's encapsulating library.

• However, the concept of a "Luau library" and its root directory is not yet rigorously defined in Luau, in terms of folder/file structure.
• In the future, we may add a package.json file or something similar that marks the root directory of a library, but this is outside of the scope of this RFC, which primarily focuses on improving require-by-string.
• For the time being, this functionality will remain unimplemented for this reason. The alias "@" will remain reserved for now, meaning it cannot be overridden.

Of course, users can still use the alias map to explicitly define this behavior with a named alias:

"aliases": {
    "src": "../"
}

Current limitations of aliases

• Aliases cannot reference other aliases. (However, this is compatible with this proposal and will likely be implemented in the future.)
• Alias names cannot contain the directory separators / and \.
• Aliases can only occur at the beginning of a path.

Configuring alias maps: .luaurc

As part of this proposal, alias maps will be configured in .luaurc, which follows a JSON-like syntax.

Proposed structure of an alias map:

{
    "aliases": {
        "alias1": "/path/of/alias1",
        "alias2": "/path/of/alias2"
    }
}

Missing aliases in .luaurc are inherited from the alias maps of any parent directories, and fields can be overridden.

Additionally, if an alias is bound to a relative path, the path will be evaluated relative to the .luaurc file in which the alias was defined.

Finally, providing support for alias maps within the Roblox engine is out of the scope of this RFC but is being considered internally.

Caching

In the current implementation, required modules are cached based on the string that was used to require them. This means that using a mix of relative/absolute/aliased paths might lead to a cache miss—even if the module has already been required.

-- Requiring test.luau by absolute path
absolute = require("/Users/johndoe/luau-files/test")

-- Requiring test.luau by relative path
relative = require("test")

-- Currently prints false, module was re-required rather than loaded from cache
print(absolute == relative)

Currently, since relative paths are always evaluated in relation to the current working directory and absolute paths are always evaluated in relation to the system's root directory, all files in a project end up using the same paths in the current implementation. However, with the proposed change to resolving relative paths (in relation to the requiring file instead of in relation to the CWD), we might have files in different directories requiring modules using different relative paths.

For example, require("mymodule") and require("../mymodule") might refer to the same module, depending on the requiring files' locations. With the current cache implementation, the second statement would be a cache miss, as "mymodule" is not literally equal to "../mymodule".

To solve this issue, we propose transforming every path that is passed to require into an equivalent absolute path and using this to cache, regardless of whether it was originally passed in as a relative, absolute, or aliased path. This way, a module's return value is stored in both a unique and consistent way across different files. Additionally, using absolute paths as opposed to, say, relative-to-cwd paths for caching ensures that aliased paths also maximize cache hits.

Symlinks

Symlinks carry some security concerns; for example, a link's target might exist outside of the project folder in which the link was defined. For the first version of this implementation, symlinks will not be supported and will be treated as ordinary files.

If we do implement symlinks in the future, we will likely use our own limit to the number of symlinks to "follow through" for cross-platform compatibility. It is also possible that we will add a new configurable property in .luaurc that will allow developers to toggle whether or not to resolve symlinks.

Similar examples:

• https://www.typescriptlang.org/tsconfig#preserveSymlinks
• https://webpack.js.org/configuration/resolve/#resolvesymlinks

Use Cases

Alias map

Using alias maps, Luau developers can require globally installed Luau libraries in their code without needing to specify their locations in Luau scripts.

luau-aliases-project
├── .luaurc
└── src
    └── module.luau

For example, if we wanted to require Roact in module.luau, we could add the following alias to .luaurc:

{
    "aliases": {
        "Roact": "/Users/johndoe/LuauLibraries/Roact/src"
    }
}

Then, we could simply write the following in module.luau, and everything would work as intended:

local Roact = require("Roact")
local Component = require("Roact/Component")

If we ever wanted to change the version of Roact used by luau-aliases-project, we would simply change the absolute path to Roact in .luaurc. By abstracting away the exact location of globally installed libraries like this, we get clean, readable code, and we make it easier for a future package manager to update dependencies by modifying .luaurc files.

Large-scale projects in Luau

For large-scale Luau projects, we might imagine that every dependency of the project is a Luau project itself. We might use an organizational structure like this to create a clean hierarchy:

large-luau-project
├── .luaurc
├── subproject-1
├── subproject-2
└── subproject-3

We can provide the following alias in large-luau-project/.luaurc:

{
    "aliases": {
        "com.roblox.luau": "."
    }
}

This way, each subproject directory can contain its own source code, dependencies, and .luaurc configuration files, while also inheriting the com.roblox.luau alias from large-luau-project/.luaurc.

This allows us to refer to other subprojects like this, regardless of the exact location of the requiring file in large-luau-project:

local subproject1 = require("com.roblox.luau/subproject-1")

Roblox Specifics

In the Roblox engine, a similar aliasing system could be implemented. Assuming a central package management system were available, a Roblox Script could contain local Roact = require("Roact"), and everything would "just work".

Drawbacks

Backwards Compatibility

This alias system introduces a new layer to require that wasn't previously there. However, the advantages of this system are expected to outweigh the complexities it introduces.

Alternatives

Different Ways of Defining Aliases

Defining Paths/Aliases Directly in the Requiring File

This approach has several drawbacks, such as making the code less clean and complicating the task for package managers.

Defining Configuration Files in a Non-JSON Format

Alias maps could alternatively be defined in specially named .luau files, but using JSON is simpler and more standardized.