node

Don’t try

npm install with node_modules already in place — npm only builds packages it adds or changes, so the stale binary is skipped; npm rebuild re-runs the install scripts. (×1) · record

share one node_modules between the host and a container or CI image on another Node version or OS — the addon is built for the runtime that installed it; install or rebuild inside each environment instead. (×1) · record

killall node, or taskkill /IM node.exe /F — kills every Node process (other projects, editor language servers, watchers), and the port holder may not be Node at all. (×1) · record

rerun the start command until it binds — the port stays taken until the owning process exits; a retry changes nothing. (×1) · record

"moduleResolution": "bundler" and run the tsc output directly with node — bundler resolution accepts extensionless imports at type-check time, but tsc never rewrites them, so Node still cannot find the file. (×1) · record

node --experimental-specifier-resolution=node dist/index.js — the flag was removed in Node 19; current Node accepts it as a no-op and the import still fails. (×1) · record

add "type": "module" to the app's package.json — every .js file in the app becomes ESM, so the existing require(), module.exports and __dirname then throw ReferenceError. (×1) · record

switch to import() but keep tsconfig "module": "commonjs" — under module commonjs tsc emits import() as Promise.resolve().then(() => require(...)), recreating the error; "module": "nodenext" keeps import() as written. (×1) · record

add retries or a wait-on loop, assuming the server is not up yet — the server is up on IPv4; every attempt dials ::1 first and is refused again. (×1) · record

make the server listen on 'localhost' — listen() binds only the first address localhost resolves to (::1 on Node 17+), which moves the refusal to 127.0.0.1 clients. (×1) · record

new URL('.', import.meta.url).pathname — on Windows it yields '/C:/...' with a leading slash and %20 for spaces, so fs calls miss; fileURLToPath() decodes it correctly. (×1) · record

process.cwd() or path.resolve('.') in place of __dirname — resolves against the directory the process was started from, not the module's folder, so it breaks when run from elsewhere. (×1) · record

node --experimental-modules index.js — ESM needs no flag since Node 12.17/13.2 and current Node accepts this one as a no-op, so the file is still parsed as CommonJS. (×1) · record

set "type": "module" in the repo-root package.json while a nested package.json sits closer to the file — Node uses the nearest package.json up the tree; the nested one (often dist/ or a workspace package) keeps deciding the module type. (×1) · record