Simon Verhoeven
Simon Verhoeven
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CCConvex Community
Created by Simon Verhoeven on 3/5/2025 in #support-community
Issue using externalPackages Not Excluding Dependencies
I am trying to use fabric fabric/node in a convex node action and it seems it's dependency canvas cannot be bundled and will produce this issue when deploying convex functions 
 No loader is configured for ".node" files: node_modules/fabric/node_modules/canvas/build/Release/canvas.node

    node_modules/fabric/node_modules/canvas/lib/bindings.js:3:25:
      3 │ const bindings = require('../build/Release/canvas.node')
 No loader is configured for ".node" files: node_modules/fabric/node_modules/canvas/build/Release/canvas.node

    node_modules/fabric/node_modules/canvas/lib/bindings.js:3:25:
      3 │ const bindings = require('../build/Release/canvas.node')
It seems to me that the solution should be to add this to convex.json as shown here https://docs.convex.dev/functions/bundling#external-packages 
{
  "node": {
    "externalPackages": ["canvas"]
  }
}
{
  "node": {
    "externalPackages": ["canvas"]
  }
}
However this does not solve the issue Also I think that adding node.externalPackages does nothing as I did an experiment 
{
  "node": {
    "externalPackages": ["lodash"]
  }
}
{
  "node": {
    "externalPackages": ["lodash"]
  }
}
But when I npx convex dev --once --debug-bundle-path /tmp/myBundle I still see lodash being bundled. I would have expected myBundle to contain a node_modules folder with lodash there separately (if I have understood this correctly). Sample Code I created a minimal reconstruction branched from one of the convex-samples, and put my node action in convex/issue.ts Steps to reproduce 
Checkout repo
npx convex dev --once --debug-bundle-path /tmp/myBundle
Checkout repo
npx convex dev --once --debug-bundle-path /tmp/myBundle
You can see my failed debugging attempt to externalize lodash here https://github.com/ziggy6792/convex-issue/tree/debug/bundle-lodash And my failed attempt to externalize canvas here https://github.com/ziggy6792/convex-issue.git Any help would be greatly appreciated or if someone has a sample repo where node.externalPackages is demonstrated that would be great (maybe I do not understand how it should work) Thanks!
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