I was able to reproduce the failure. My guess is ncc is getting confused resolving subpath exports.

I got a working build using the main entry point:

import yargsFactory from "yargs";
console.log(yargsFactory(process.argv.slice(2)).parse());

Thank you for verifying this!

I feel ncc resolves the subpath export correctly, because the root cause seems to be that build/index.cjs uses the cjs shim, instead of the esm one. And the cjs shim uses __dirname, as it should be.

I ran into this because puppeteer imports yargs using "yargs/yargs". I see several solutions to this:

• Ask for yargs' help to fix yarngs.mjs to be fully esm compatible.
• Ask for puppeteer's help to change from importing "yargs/yargs" to "yargs".
• Change the module system in my own project to use commonjs instead of esm.

What's you recommended next step for this?

What's you recommended next step for this?

I suggest try changing your project to use commonjs. That might avoid triggering the problem with the ncc compile.

Got it. I'll leave the issue open in case someone else ran into this.

Hello, I have the same problem when using puppeteer

My Express (Angular SSR) application compiles successfully, but an error appears on startup

ReferenceError: __dirname is not defined in ES module scope
    at node_modules/yargs/build/index.cjs (file:///Users/.../server/server.mjs:81673:264)
...
Node.js v18.6.0

To be clear, are you also compiling using ncc @Rouvas ?

I noticed this issue being mentioned in puppeteer/puppeteer#13249, and the fix (work-around) was to use the "old" import:

import yargs from 'yargs';

That might help track down the underlying trigger with a working case and a broken case, but even without solving it, there is hopefully a work-around.