Error: Invalid loader: "copy" (valid js...) when bundling a module with native bindings about esbuild

[evanw]

Yes, that is indeed strange. I tried to reproduce it and could not (on GitHub Codespaces, which I was hoping was similar enough to GitHub Actions):

$ npm init -y
$ npm i esbuild @sentry/node @sentry/profiling-node

$ cat esbuild.mjs
import esbuild from 'esbuild';

esbuild.buildSync({
  platform: 'node',
  entryPoints: ['./index.js'],
  outdir: './dist',
  target: 'esnext',
  format: 'cjs',
  bundle: true,
  loader: { '.node': 'copy' },
});

$ cat index.js
const Sentry = require('@sentry/node');

// This import contains statically analyzable .node binaries, I attempt to build
// it before it is published to ensure all of the precompiled binaries are included.
const Profiling = require('@sentry/profiling-node'); 

$ node esbuild.mjs
$ ls -l dist/
total 3712
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace 1664947 Jan 20 04:35 index.js
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace  104229 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-darwin-arm64-108-J4VX6HDF.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace  104229 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-darwin-arm64-115-N2RQEDBB.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace  103813 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-darwin-arm64-93-JTVX7DGV.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace  122368 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-darwin-x64-108-THJXIYCS.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace  122368 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-darwin-x64-115-WBJYZZB7.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace  105552 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-darwin-x64-93-4V264VYW.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace   67296 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-linux-arm64-glibc-108-6TU3ZBZ4.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace   67296 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-linux-arm64-glibc-115-6TU3ZBZ4.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace   67328 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-linux-arm64-glibc-93-KYRDUKU2.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace   65992 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-linux-arm64-musl-108-3CATRQ4S.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace   65992 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-linux-arm64-musl-115-3CATRQ4S.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace   66032 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-linux-arm64-musl-93-2JNCVMF6.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace   74600 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-linux-x64-glibc-108-2BYGENM7.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace   74600 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-linux-x64-glibc-115-2BYGENM7.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace   74640 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-linux-x64-glibc-93-6MUQUDKP.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace   72472 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-linux-x64-musl-108-IR7X6F5S.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace   72472 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-linux-x64-musl-115-IR7X6F5S.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace   72896 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-linux-x64-musl-93-K7ZZ352F.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace  195072 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-win32-x64-108-MW6G37UY.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace  195072 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-win32-x64-115-RC2M3MXR.node
-rw-rw-rw- 1 codespace codespace  195584 Jan 20 04:35 sentry_cpu_profiler-win32-x64-93-WG45FOPP.node

Do you perhaps somehow have a really old copy of esbuild getting run instead of the latest one? That's really the only thing I can think of that might cause this. The error for this situation no longer contains that error message. That error message was changed away from that text over two years ago in 2021 (see 2586e4f) which corresponds to esbuild version 0.14.1. Version 0.14.0 (released in November 2021) was the most recent version to contain the error message that you posted.

[JonasBa]

@evanw I suspected something like this as well, but I didn't see any place where we'd be using such an old esbuild version. Thank you for confirming it's not an esbuild issue, I will close this now and just report back if there is anything related to the tooling in our repo which might be the source of this error. Thank you!