Commonjs pb exports do not carry intellisense

[madaster97]

What version of protobuf and what language are you using?
Version: v3.6.1
Language: Javascript

What operating system (Linux, Windows, ...) and version?
Ubuntu 20.04, x86_64

What runtime / compiler are you using (e.g., python version or gcc version)
protoc pre-built compiler

What did you do?
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Create a sample protoc file, here simple.proto. I took it from this example, modified to "proto3"
2. Use the compiler to autogen JavaScript code: protoc --js_out=import_style=commonjs,binary:. simple.proto
3. Use the default export as an object with expected Schema: const Schema = require('./simple_pb');
4. Attempt to use the expected Class(es) on that object: const test = new Schema.Test1();
5. See that you do not receive intellisense for the Test1() class, nor for expected operations it's instances

What did you expect to see
Intellisense for the simple_pb operations on the default export.

What did you see instead?
No Intellisense, but the operations themselves do execute (setting values, serialzing to Binary).

I was able to "fix" the issue by changing the last line of the simple_pb.js file. The goog export extension did not work, so I just commented it out and spread the goog and proto objects into module.exports:

module.exports = {...goog, ...proto};
// goog.object.extend(exports, proto);

[thesayyn]

it is because it uses google module system instead of commonjs or esm and not likely to be fixed soon.

[piekstra]

I am running into this issue and it is very frustrating

[thesayyn]

@piekstra you might wanna try https://github.com/thesayyn/protoc-gen-ts

[dibenede]

It sounds like the issue is the way we manage exports in the code generator. We need to do a more typical assignment to exports here:

protobuf-javascript/generator/js_generator.cc

Line 3696 in a428c58

printer->Print("goog.object.extend(exports, $package$);\n", "package",

it might work to simply delete that code and change GetNamespace to return "exports" in common js mode.