Building react library using Rollup, How to avoid webpack alias in next.config.js

Question

I've setup Rollup to build a React library, when importing the library into a SPA targeting client-side rendering apps(like an app made with create-react-app) everything is okay, but when using it in a next.js app, it complains with Module not found: Can't resolve 'react' because it can't import react or react-dom and the only way to fix it now is to alias them in webpack config inside the next.js app(despite already being aliased in rollup.config.js)

I'm looking for a way to avoid this alias config in next.config.js file.

Here's my Rollup config

const config = {
    input: "src/index.ts",
    output: {
        file: path.join(__dirname, "./dist/index.js"),
        format: "es",
    },
    external: ['react', 'react-dom'],
    plugins: [

        alias({
            entries: [{
                    find: 'react',
                    replacement: path.resolve(__dirname, 'node_modules/react'),
                },
                {
                    find: 'react-dom',
                    replacement: path.resolve(__dirname, 'node_modules/react-dom'),
                }]
        }),

        resolve({
            browser: true,
            // pass custom options to the resolve plugin
            moduleDirectories: ["node_modules"],
            dedupe: ["react", "react-dom"],
        }),
        replace({
            "process.env.NODE_ENV": JSON.stringify("production"),
            preventAssignment: true,
        }),

        commonJS(),
    ],
};

export default config;

and here's how to solve the issue when importing the library in a next.js app

// next.config.js
const path = require('path');


/** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
const nextConfig = {
    reactStrictMode: true,
    webpack(config) {

        config.resolve.alias = {
            ...config.resolve.alias,
            'react': path.resolve(__dirname, './node_modules/react'),
            'react-dom': path.resolve(__dirname, './node_modules/react-dom')
        }

        return config;
    }
}

module.exports = nextConfig

The full code that's needed to reproduce the issue: https://github.com/lalosh/rollup-webpack-alias-issue

Answer 1

I was able to successfully run the react-library-test-app from your example repository. Assuming you already have the react-library built with Rollup, go through the following steps.

#1 - Add @lalosh/rollup-webpack-alias-issue to the dependencies of react-library-test-app.

"dependencies": {
    "@lalosh/rollup-webpack-alias-issue": "1.0.0",
    "next": "12.1.0",
    "react": "17.0.2",
    "react-dom": "17.0.2"
}

#2 - npm link @lalosh/rollup-webpack-alias-issue

From the react-library folder run the following command:

npm link

Then from the react-library-test-app folder run:

npm link @lalosh/rollup-webpack-alias-issue

#3 - Remove webpack configuration

Finally, remove the extra webpack configuration in next.config.js.

/** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
const nextConfig = {
    reactStrictMode: true,
};

module.exports = nextConfig;

Then run the app in development mode with npm run dev. The app should be able to run without any errors.