Circular imports in HMR

[n9]

Description

As a developer migrating to Vite I want HMR to work with circular imports.

HMR currently fallbacks to full-reload when an exception is thrown during import:

vite/packages/vite/src/client/client.ts

Lines 159 to 167 in 2bc5d3d

	if (isWithinCircularImport) {
	importPromise.catch(() => {
	console.info(
	`[hmr] ${acceptedPath} failed to apply HMR as it's within a circular import. Reloading page to reset the execution order. ` +
	`To debug and break the circular import, you can run \`vite --debug hmr\` to log the circular dependency path if a file change triggered it.`,
	)
	pageReload()
	})
	}

This happens when modules with the isWithinCircularImport flag are imported in a different than the original order.

Example:

• Main imports Links
• Links imports PageA, PageB, ...
• PageA imports Links
• PageB imports Links
• ...

Simplified content of the Links module:

import PageA from "./PageA";
import PageB from "./PageB";

export const pageA = defineLink(PageA);
export const pageB = defineLink(PageB);
...

Modules PageA, PageB, ... define pages with their parameters and render links to other pages.

When Links is changed, HMR posts js-update with Links, which is fine.
However, when PageA is changed, HMR posts js-update with PageA, which fails with ReferenceError: Cannot access 'UsersPage' before initialization. (The exception is thrown because PageA imports the invalidated module Links, which references to PageA that has not yet been initialized.)

Suggested solution

The solution is to change HMR so that it imports modules in the same order as they were initially imported.

For the example above:

When PageA is changed, send js-update with Links instead of PageA.

Alternative

No response

Additional context

I found the following PRs that attempts to address HMR issues with circular imports:

• feat(hmr): improve circular import updates #14867
• feat(hmr): reload for circular imports only if error #15118

And the following issues:

• HMR should handle cyclic dependencies #10208 (comment)
• Circular imports bring a poor experience to users #14975 (comment)
• Hot Reload not working  #15053 (comment)

Validations

• Follow our Code of Conduct
• Read the Contributing Guidelines.
• Read the docs.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that request the same feature to avoid creating a duplicate.