Skip to content
This repository was archived by the owner on Mar 25, 2026. It is now read-only.
This repository was archived by the owner on Mar 25, 2026. It is now read-only.

There should be an escape hatch to allow unknown import attributes #132

Open

Description

@gibson042

Now that #131 has established a requirement for implementations to reject unknown attributes, deferring the upgrade concerns of #21 (comment) and #56 (comment) is more hazardous. As suggested in #131 (comment) , I think it would be valuable to add an escape hatch allowing authors to explicitly indicate that particular import attributes should be ignored when they are unknown to an implementation. It would be logically similar to the ! criticality flag of the IETF timestamp suffixes draft, but with reversed polarity. As a strawperson, @nicolo-ribaudo suggested syntax like with { type: "css", layer?: "utilities" } or with { type: "css", "layer?": "utilities" }.

And a final point noted at #131 (comment) :

an alternative design could involve consideration of not just the attribute name but also the value, such that a new implementation might want to reject import "./image.png" with { type: "image", "as?": "not-yet-shipped-format" } while an old implementation that doesn't even know about as would treat the import like with { type: "image" }. But that kind of variance doesn't seem helpful in either the name-only or the name-and-value design anyway. It's worth noting that neither design is fully general with respect to fallback, but I'm just striving for a bridge to something better while the range of valid values for any particular attribute has not been subject to many changes and thus that lack of generality isn't detrimental.

Activity

  1. ljharb commented on Mar 14, 2023

    @ljharb
    Member

    I think that it's very important there not be an escape hatch - giving the ecosystem carte blanche to throw whatever they like in here risks fragmenting the language.

  2. gibson042 commented on Mar 14, 2023

    @gibson042
    MemberAuthor

    The proposal already allows each implementation to define its own list of supported attributes: https://tc39.es/proposal-import-assertions/#sec-hostgetsupportedimportassertions

    This suggestion wouldn't change that. It would, however, allow a way for new assertions to be added without requiring fragmentation of source files.

  3. juner commented on Mar 29, 2024

    @juner
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions