Question: why isn't `protos.json` loaded with a `require` call in Node environment?

[hmaurer]

Hello!

During an attempt to bundle (via esbuild) a Node application using the firebase-admin SDK I noticed that protos.json is loaded using a require call in a browser environment, but loaded differently in a Node environment, c.f.

nodejs-firestore/dev/src/v1/firestore_admin_client.ts

Line 164 in c7d67fb

require('../../protos/protos.json')

While I acknowledge that bundling Node applications may not be a use-case you want to support, I was wondering why you made the explicit choice of not using require in a Node environment? My suggestion would be to use require in all environments, like so:

this._protos = this._gaxGrpc.loadProto(require('../../protos/protos.json'));

It'd appear that I am not the only one who ran into this issue:

• Functions fail when using Firebase Admin SDK netlify/next-on-netlify#68
• Firebase-Admin does not deploy properly to Lambda serverless-nextjs/serverless-next.js#876

Bundling back-end applications has some benefits (in my case, generate the smallest possible package for services deployed to Cloud Run / Cloud Functions), so if making this small change would enable it it'd be wonderful!

Thanks for your work.

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Related threads:

• ENOENT: no such file or directory, open 'protos.json' nodejs-speech#489
• Webpack and other bundler support google-cloud-node#2933

[hmaurer]

Update: it looks like my suggestion has been implemented a few days ago: googleapis/gapic-generator-typescript#861! There's only one question left then: when will this come to this package? I'd be happy to submit a pull request bumping google-gax to 2.12.0 and switching to require, as suggested by googleapis/gapic-generator-typescript#861 (comment).

[alexander-fenster]

@hmaurer It came in today :) #1500 is where it happened.

[hmaurer]

@alexander-fenster Wonderful, thanks! <3

[alexander-fenster]

Fixed by #1500.