Replace `find-pkg` and friends with `empathic` or `fd-package-json`

[43081j]

Packages such as these:

• find-pkg
  • replaced by pkg.up({ cwd })
• find-file-up
  • replaced by find.up(name, { cwd })
• find-up-simple
  • replaced by find.up(name, { cwd })
• find-up
  • replaced by find.up(name, { cwd })
• pkg-dir
  • replaced by dirname(pkg.up({ cwd }))
• find-cache-dir
  • replaced by pkg.cache
• find-cache-directory
  • replaced by pkg.cache

and more, can all be replaced by empathic:

https://github.com/lukeed/empathic

this is much faster and usually smaller to install

empathic is ESM only. if that blocks us, we can use fd-package-json to find the closest package.json. but there is no obvious replacement for the generic case. you could use walk-up-path but would need more inline logic

with require(esm) being in all LTS of node now, we may be able to use empathic still if the projects have a high enough engine requirement

[talentlessguy]

find-pkg

#	Downloads	Traffic	Version	Package
1	4.50M	12.33 GB	^0.1.2	cwd
2	3.32M	9.08 GB	2.0.0	@module-federation/managers
3	3.31M	9.08 GB	2.0.0	@module-federation/manifest
4	2.95M	8.10 GB	2.0.0	@module-federation/third-party-dts-extractor
5	131.97k	361.60 MB	^2.0.0	load-pkg

find-file-up's only major dependent is find-pkg

find-up-simple

#	Downloads	Traffic	Version	Package
1	192.34M	500.84 GB	^1.0.0	pkg-dir
2	101.35M	263.91 GB	^1.0.0	read-pkg-up
3	8.02M	20.87 GB	^1.0.0	pkg-conf
4	5.50M	14.32 GB	^1.0.0	preferred-pm
5	3.19M	8.31 GB	^1.0.0	read-package-up
6	2.03M	5.29 GB	^1.0.0	cspell-gitignore
7	291.64k	759.43 MB	^1.0.0	package-config
8	289.38k	753.55 MB	^1.0.0	xo
9	130.27k	339.23 MB	^1.0.0	package-up
10	342	890.57 KB	^1.0.0	@flowr/eslint-config

find-up

#	Downloads	Traffic	Version	Package
1	148.02M	574.78 GB	^5.0.0	eslint
2	78.84M	306.14 GB	^4.1.0	@istanbuljs/load-nyc-config
3	29.83M	115.82 GB	^5.0.0	mocha
4	27.40M	106.40 GB	^6.2.0	pkg-up
5	14.34M	55.70 GB	^5.0.0	react-dev-utils
6	12.78M	49.62 GB	^4.1.0	nyc
7	11.38M	44.19 GB	^7.0.0	@commitlint/top-level
8	8.21M	31.90 GB	^5.0.0	@sentry/bundler-plugin-core
9	8.07M	31.34 GB	^5.0.0	@react-native-community/cli-tools
10	7.67M	29.78 GB	^5.0.0	@storybook/preset-react-webpack
11	6.95M	27.00 GB	^5.0.0	c8
12	6.49M	25.19 GB	^5.0.0	@storybook/cli
13	6.47M	25.13 GB	^5.0.0	@react-native-community/cli
14	5.03M	19.52 GB	^5.0.0	@storybook/react-vite
15	4.94M	19.19 GB	^4.1.0	@storybook/semver
16	3.69M	14.32 GB	^5.0.0	@storybook/nextjs
17	3.63M	14.11 GB	^5.0.0	expo-modules-autolinking
18	3.44M	13.37 GB	^5.0.0	@expo/package-manager
19	3.35M	13.03 GB	^5.0.0	pretty-quick
20	3.33M	12.93 GB	^5.0.0	@storybook/builder-webpack4
21	3.26M	12.65 GB	^5.0.0	@storybook/manager-webpack4
22	2.64M	10.25 GB	^5.0.0	@expo/xcpretty
23	2.49M	9.67 GB	^5.0.0	@expo/fingerprint
24	2.29M	8.88 GB	^5.0.0	@vanilla-extract/integration
25	2.08M	8.09 GB	^5.0.0	@storybook/manager-webpack5
26	1.85M	7.17 GB	^3.0.0	dotgitignore
27	1.77M	6.89 GB	^5.0.0	eslint-plugin-compat
28	1.60M	6.22 GB	^5.0.0	jest-expo
29	1.41M	5.46 GB	^5.0.0	standard-version
30	1.27M	4.93 GB	^5.0.0	@pnpm/find-workspace-dir
31	923.39k	3.59 GB	^5.0.0	@storybook/angular
32	841.06k	3.27 GB	^5.0.0	hardhat blocked by CommonJS
33	820.03k	3.18 GB	^6.0.0	@netlify/zip-it-and-ship-it
34	793.62k	3.08 GB	^5.0.0	prettier-eslint-cli
35	745.83k	2.90 GB	^5.0.0	detox
36	685.30k	2.66 GB	^5.0.0	@embroider/macros
37	657.53k	2.55 GB	6.3.0	@cypress/webpack-dev-server
38	617.81k	2.40 GB	^3.0.0	libnpmconfig
39	605.84k	2.35 GB	^2.1.0	magicli
40	594.29k	2.31 GB	5.0.0	renovate
41	591.82k	2.30 GB	^2.1.0	codeowners
42	583.62k	2.27 GB	5.0.0	orval
43	572.74k	2.22 GB	^6.0.0	@netlify/config
44	526.16k	2.04 GB	^5.0.0	ember-cli
45	501.70k	1.95 GB	5.0.0	@lerna/legacy-package-management
46	500.23k	1.94 GB	^5.0.0	@linaria/utils
47	487.45k	1.89 GB	^7.0.0	@eslint/config-inspector
48	486.24k	1.89 GB	^5.0.0	@electron-forge/core
49	481.10k	1.87 GB	^5.0.0	@electron-forge/core-utils
50	461.08k	1.79 GB	^5.0.0	ember-compatibility-helpers

pkg-dir

#	Downloads	Traffic	Version	Package
1	109.10M	219.72 GB	^7.0.0	find-cache-dir
2	86.81M	174.84 GB	^4.2.0	import-local
3	5.32M	10.72 GB	<6 >=5	find-yarn-workspace-root2
4	2.91M	5.87 GB	^7.0.0	@pulumi/pulumi
5	1.96M	3.94 GB	5.0.0	@appium/support
6	1.46M	2.93 GB	^5.0.0	node-stdlib-browser
7	1.21M	2.44 GB	5.0.0	@appium/docutils
8	958.06k	1.93 GB	^5.0.0	npm-check
9	737.03k	1.48 GB	^3.0.0	hard-source-webpack-plugin
10	723.76k	1.46 GB	^4.2.0	yarn-or-npm

[rubiesonthesky]

Changing from find-up to find-up-simple halves the size of used library. Of course, if it's only used for finding package.json then changing to fd-package-json or similar could be better.

[talentlessguy]

Also to note, Node.js is shipping findPackageJSON soon

nodejs/node#55412

would be useful for packages targeting node 22.x and higher

[talentlessguy]

Update: findPackageJSON is available since 22.14: nodejs/node#56910 (though the API is unstable)

[43081j]

we can also replace find-cache-dir with pkg.cache from empathic

that should give us a lot of easy replacements to do

[43081j]

ok the big ones seem to be:

• babel-loader uses find-up
• c8 uses find-up
• nyc uses find-cache-dir
• @babel/register uses find-cache-dir
• eslint-loader uses find-cache-dir
• @storybook/react-docgen-typescript-plugin uses find-cache-dir

all of these should be replaceable with empathic

and some more packages to find dependents of:

• find-up-simple
• find-cache-directory

[beeequeue]

c8 has said they're not interested in replacing find-up, but maybe someone else can help convince them

bcoe/c8#559 (comment)

---

Storybook is WIP, but I'm kind of lost on how to debug the current issues in it due to the large codebase

storybookjs/storybook#31338

[43081j]

ah! I didn't realise you already had an open PR for storybook

if we split it up into a PR per monorepo package, it will be a lot easier

maybe we can split your PR up, or use the ones I pushed?

[beeequeue]

i would say split the PR by replaced package, as most other than find-up are only used in one place or so

i organized the commits to be fairly isolated, so cherry picking them should be fairly straight forward

[43081j]

I have opened eslint/eslint#19696

Also mochajs/mocha#5359

[voxpelli]

I did the home work this project should have done before starting to bother projects with minuscule performance gains: mochajs/mocha#5346 (comment)

See my full comparison in that issue.

[43081j]

we did the work 👍 a performance gain is a gain.

your findings show us it is indeed faster. until it ships CJS, it may be slightly larger on disk than some alternatives but that was needed for adoption in some mocha-sized projects which can't yet bump engine constraint.

[voxpelli]

My findings also included vital benchmark inaccuracies (apart from the fact that its benchmarked on Deno, not on Node.js) and functional differences (matching both files and directories to the name, not just files or directories as eg. find-up + some questions on how it handles symlinks):

The find.any is compared to findUpMultipleSync rather than the findUp.sync(exports.CONFIG_FILES, {cwd}) that's actually used: https://github.com/mochajs/mocha/blob/5730dfcf11e4cd48ba2b24601eaadf34a5c9b1a9/lib/cli/config.js#L95

This is a vital difference as findUpMultipleSync by default returns all matched paths whereas findUp.sync only returns the first one matched.

There are also other subtle differences:

• find-up uses fs.statSync / fs.lstatSync whereas empathic uses fs.existsSync
• findUpMultipleSync.sync in the benchmarking is configured to do the non-default allowSymlinks: false even though fs.existsSync does follow symlinks
• find-up as well as locate-path is designed to ensure to only match files or only directories, defaulting to files. empathic seems to do no such checks, creating a regression if there's any directory that has the desired name. Of course its quicker to not check if its a file or directory, but better? I wouldn't argue that.