Import error when using package imports in vite.config.js

[geigerzaehler]

Describe the bug

When I use package imports in vite.config.js, Vite fails to load the configuration file and displays the following error:

failed to load config from .../vite.config.js
error when starting dev server:
TypeError [ERR_PACKAGE_IMPORT_NOT_DEFINED]: Package import specifier "#src/utils.js" is not defined imported from .../node_modules/.vite-temp/vite.config.ts.timestamp-1733215455982-e048dc6e2c576.mjs

This used to work in v5. My best guess is that it is caused by #18509.

Reproduction

https://stackblitz.com/edit/stackblitz-starters-aszvug?file=package.json

Steps to reproduce

pnpm install
npx vite

System Info

  System:
    OS: Linux 5.0 undefined
    CPU: (8) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9880H CPU @ 2.30GHz
    Memory: 0 Bytes / 0 Bytes
    Shell: 1.0 - /bin/jsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 18.20.3 - /usr/local/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.19 - /usr/local/bin/yarn
    npm: 10.2.3 - /usr/local/bin/npm
    pnpm: 8.15.6 - /usr/local/bin/pnpm
  npmPackages:
    vite: ^6.0.2 => 6.0.2 

Used Package Manager

pnpm

Logs

No response

Validations

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• The provided reproduction is a minimal reproducible example of the bug.

[bluwy]

Looks like any files placed in node_modules can't access subpath imports from the root package.json, which is strange and I don't see it particularly documented in node. Anyways I guess we have to resolve subpath imports as well to fix this.

[lehni]

It looks like #18637 would solve this since it doesn't rely on the temporary file inside node_modules anymore.

[hi-ogawa]

Spec wise, probably Node bans this since LOOKUP_PACKAGE_SCOPE cuts off early for files under node_modules. I'm reading PACKAGE_IMPORTS_RESOLVE and LOOKUP_PACKAGE_SCOPE in https://nodejs.org/docs/v22.12.0/api/esm.html#resolution-algorithm-specification.