Add support for aliases regex matching

[gunta]

Hi again!
I hope to not be too spammy, but I'll try to report all the issues I find along the way ;)

Right now I'm using an alias to resolve a package name,
but the test regex doesn't tries to match the defined aliases.

Current way of doing it:

 resolve: {
      alias: {
        angular: 'angular/angular'
      }
    },
    module: {
      loaders: [{ test: /angular\/angular/, loader: 'exports?angular'}]
    }

Easier and less verbose way supporting alias names:

    module: {
      loaders: [{ test: /^angular$/, loader: 'exports?angular'}]
    }

Or even better, defaulting a test: String parameter to alias matching:

    module: {
      loaders: [{ test: 'angular', loader: 'exports?angular'}]
    }

What do you think?

[sokra]

Currently loaders are matched against the resolved resource.

So you could write it less verbose with:

    module: {
      loaders: [{ test: require.resolve('angular/angular'), loader: 'exports?angular'}]
    }

It may be possible to match against the resolved and non-resolved resource...

[gunta]

I see.

Some questions:

1. While require.resolve works for npm packages, how would you resolve it easily for bower packages? Maybe by creating a resolve.anything() function?
2. I think that test should match resolved, non-resolved, and aliases by default, what do you think?

If the syntax becomes messy, perhaps using different keys? Something like:

For aliases:

module: {
    loaders: [{ testAlias: 'angular', loader: 'exports?angular'}]
}

For non-resolved resources:

module: {
    loaders: [{ testBefore: 'angular', loader: 'exports?angular'}]
}

However I think something more simple like being based on the parameter type like this can be easier to use:

For resolved resources, a Regex pattern:

module: {
    loaders: [{ test: /angular\.js/, loader: 'exports?angular'}]
}

For non-resolved resources and aliases, a plain String:

module: {
    loaders: [{ test: 'angular', loader: 'exports?angular'}]
}

What do you think?

[sokra]

1. require.resolve also works for bower packages if you confiugure the resolving in your configuration to resolve them.
2. I like the syntax which uses an alternative key for non-resolved matching. i. e. testBefore or testRaw

strings already have a function. They match the start of the request, so you can pass an absolute path here.

[sokra]

Oh I missunderstood part 1.

require.resolve in the configuration only resolve npm modules. For other packages you can pass an absolute path to the package. path.join(__dirname, "bower_modules", "myPackage") or write your own resolve function which does this for you (better readable).