Requiring config.js file in VSCode extension with absolute path (e.g. "C:\...") does not work - visual-studio-code

Question

I am developing the Argdown VSCode extension. The Argdown parser can be configured using either argdown.config.json files or argdown.config.js files exporting a config object. Using Javascript files is the easiest way to allow users to add custom plugins to the Argdown parser.
If the user tells the parser to use a Javascript file, the file is loaded using import-fresh, (which uses node's require, but deletes the cached version.
Using the Argdown commandline tool (#argdown/cli) this works fine, but in the VSCode extension the module of the config file can not be found. The extension is using absolute file paths to require the config module (e.g. "C:\Users\my-username\projects\my-argdown-project\argdown.config.js"). These paths work with import-fresh outside of the VScode extension.
Is there a security restriction for VSCode extensions that does not allow to require modules with absolute file paths? Or is there some other reason why this does not work?

Answer 1

This was not related to VSCode. The problem was caused by bundling up import-fresh with webpack. I thought that webpack would ignore dynamic imports, but it did not.
I was lucky: Since last month, webpack supports "magic comments" for require (not only for import). So I can use:
require(/* webpackIgnore: true */ file);
You have to activate magic comments support in your webpack config:
module.exports = {
parser: {
javascript: {
commonjsMagicComments: true,
},
},
}
Now the next question is how to add the magic comments to the import-fresh package. For that I used the string-replace-loader:
module.exports = {
module: {
rules: {
{
enforce: "pre",
test: /import-fresh[\/\\]index\.js/,
loader: "string-replace-loader",
options: {
search:
"return parent === undefined ? require(filePath) : parent.require(filePath);",
replace:
"return parent === undefined ? require(/* webpackIgnore: true */ filePath) : parent.require(/* webpackIgnore: true */ filePath);",
},
},
}
}
}
After that, I could load the argdown.config.js files again, even after bundling everything with webpack.