JavaScript - babel-preset-env not transpiling arrow functions for IE11

Question

I'm having a hard time trying to configure Babel to transpile code that IE11 can understand, specifically arrow functions. Running npx webpack --mode=development with my configuration doesn't convert the arrow functions in my code: in the eval() statement in the generated code, I can see that all the instances have gone unconverted.

Unlike in the console output quoted in this question, there's no mention in mine of "Using targets" or "Using presets". Whether that's something to do with using npx webpack rather than npm run build I don't know.

Here's the Babel part of my package.json:

{
  // name, version etc. snipped
  "devDependencies": {
    "@babel/core": "^7.1.2",
    "@babel/plugin-transform-async-to-generator": "^7.1.0",
    "@babel/plugin-transform-es2015-arrow-functions": "^6.22.0",
    "@babel/plugin-transform-es2015-modules-commonjs": "^6.26.2",
    "@babel/preset-env": "^7.1.0",
    "ajv": "^6.5.4",
    "copy-webpack-plugin": "^4.5.2",
    "eslint-plugin-jest": "^21.24.1",
    "jest": "^23.6.0",
    "jest-dom": "^2.0.4",
    "webpack": "^4.20.2",
    "webpack-cli": "^3.1.2"
  },
  "babel": {
    "presets": [
      [
        "@babel/preset-env",
        {
          "targets": {
            "ie": "11"
          }
        }
      ]
    ],
    "env": {
      "development": {
        "plugins": [
          "transform-es2015-arrow-functions",
          "transform-es2015-modules-commonjs"
        ]
      },
      "test": {
        "plugins": [
          "transform-es2015-arrow-functions",
          "transform-es2015-modules-commonjs"
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

My webpack.config.js looks like:

const CopyWebpackPlugin = require("copy-webpack-plugin");
const path = require("path");

module.exports = {
    entry: "./src/thing.js",
    optimization: {
        minimize: false
    },
    output: {
        filename: "thing.js",
        path: path.resolve(__dirname, "dist")
    },
    plugins: [
        new CopyWebpackPlugin([
            // snipped
        ])
    ]
};

I arrived at this point from reading other questions here about Babel configurations, and the babel-preset-env docs and also the very skimpy babel-plugin-transform-es2015-arrow-functions docs. The answers to this very similar question (no accepted answer) don't mention that plugin at all, and one suggests using a polyfill, which seems to involve loading a library in your actual code rather than at this stage?

I'm very new to working with Webpack in general and don't understand what the difference is between "env" (which gets mentioned in a lot of questions) and "@babel/preset-env". Or really what the former implies in general; if you click on "env" in the docs navigation, it takes you to the page for @babel/preset-env.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

If you are using Webpack 5, you need to specify the features that you want to transpile in the ouput.environment configuration, as explained here: https://webpack.js.org/configuration/output/#outputenvironment.

output: {
  // ... other configs
  environment: {
    arrowFunction: false,
    bigIntLiteral: false,
    const: false,
    destructuring: false,
    dynamicImport: false,
    forOf: false,
    module: false,
  },
}

EDIT 08/10/22

While doing some refactoring of my webpack configuration, I figured out that the arrows had stopped transpiling (or maybe I didn't test extensively when giving the original answer).

Two things weren't setup correctly: the target key was missing, and the babel configuration had a wrong value.

For supporting legacy browsers, the target key needs to be set like this:

target: ['web', 'es5']

While in the Babel configuration, I had added 'not dead' in the browserslist configuration under targets in the Babel loader, so since IE11 is now technically dead, this configuration removed the trasnpilation of the arrow function.

So if you still need to transpile the arrow function, this would be the relevant part in the Babel configuration.

module: {
  rules: [
    {
      test: /\.m?js$/,
      use: {
        loader: 'babel-loader',
        options: {
          presets: [
            [
              '@babel/preset-env',
              {
                useBuiltIns: 'entry',
                targets: {
                  // be sure not to add 'not dead' here 
                  browsers: ['> 1%', 'last 2 versions', 'Firefox ESR']
                },
                corejs: {
                  version: 3,
                  proposals: false,
                },
              },
            ],
          ],
          plugins: [['@babel/plugin-transform-runtime', { corejs: 3 }]],
        },
      },
    },
  ],
},

Answer 2

In addition to loganfsmyth's answer that solved the problem, I want to note for any other beginners reading this that I made life easier for myself afterward by moving the Babel configuration out of package.json into a .babelrc.

I also discovered that the plugins I needed, such as the one I mentioned above, babel-plugin-transform-es2015-arrow-functions, have newer versions with a different naming scheme - for that example, @babel/plugin-transform-arrow-functions. The documentation pages for the old versions don't mention that.

The module part of my webpack.config.js now looks like:

module: {
    rules: [
        {
            test: /\.m?js$/,
            exclude: /node_modules/,
            use: {
                loader: "babel-loader"
            }
        }
    ]
}

My .babelrc looks like:

{
    "presets": [
        [
            "@babel/preset-env",
            {
                "targets": {
                    "ie": "11"
                },
                "useBuiltIns": "entry"
            }
        ]
    ],
    "plugins": [
        "@babel/transform-async-to-generator",
        "@babel/transform-arrow-functions",
        "@babel/transform-modules-commonjs"
    ],
    "env": {
        "development": {},
        "test": {},
        "production": {}
    }
}

Update 2021: As of Webpack version 5, it outputs ES6 code by default. If you need that not to happen, you need to add a configuration setting. See Giorgio Tempesta's answer.

Answer 3

Babel itself is a transformation library, but on its own it will not integrate into any specific tooling. To use Babel with Webpack, you'll want to install the babel-loader package and configure it in your Webpack config using something along the lines of

module: {
  rules: [
    {
      test: /\.m?js$/,
      exclude: /node_modules/,
      use: {
        loader: 'babel-loader',
      }
    }
  ]
}

Answer 4

2022 Update

If you have this problem now, it could be because browerslist treats IE 11 as dead since version 4.21.0. The solution to access IE 11 anyway is to add ie 11 either as the last entry in browserslist or at least after not dead.

Normally you don't see browserslist in the package.json, but if you use npm ls browserslist you can see which dependency uses browserslist and which version of it.

See also: https://github.com/browserslist/browserslist/issues/699

Answer 5

I had the same problem. Turned out it wasn't all of my code that had arrow functions, but only one single library. I went inside my built bundle, and searched for code with arrow functions (=>). Then I searched and copied some unique-looking names around it and managed to find the source of it searching for it in all files within node_modules. In my case it turned out that the code with arrow functions came from fetch polyfill called unfetch. I'm not sure why it didn't get transpiled by the plugin, but I switched it to "whatwg-fetch" and it worked just fine - no arrow functions in bundle anymore. You could try the same technique to discover what causes it in your case.