gatsby-plugin-mdx doesn't find local plugins?

[kylegillen]

Is this expected? Known issue?

{
  resolve: `gatsby-plugin-mdx`,
  options: {
    gatsbyRemarkPlugins: [
      `my-local-plugin`, // doesn't work
      {
        resolve: require.resolve('path-to-my-local-plugin') // works
      }
    ]
  }
}

[wardpeet]

Hey @nextriot, it's more like a feature request. This can be handled by gatsby-plugin-mdx.

We're happy to get pull requests.

[Js-Brecht]

@wardpeet do you think it would it make sense to export resolvePlugin() from Gatsby core (or gatsby-core-utils, maybe?), effectively making it a public API? Any plugins that can be extended by additional plugins could then use it to resolve those extensions, and easily remain consistent with Gatsby's behavior.

[pieh]

There are lots of interconnected issues here. Especially if the gatsby-plugin-mdx is declared in theme and not in top-level gatsby-config:

• plugins defined by themes can't be resolved in some cases #21589
• Allow parent plugins to declare what pluginOptions fields core should treat as subplugins #21592

Note that the issues mostly talk about subplugins being npm packages, but it's actually the same problem for local plugins

Exporting resolvePlugin alone wouldn't be enough - there would also need to be some metadata of location of gatsby-config that declare given plugin to be able to resolve correctly (to use as rootDir param of `resolvePlugin).

On top of that, check this comment #8379 (comment) about work on "selective cache invalidation" - for this to work Gatsby core will need to know about relationships between plugins/subplugins to properly clear caches and exporting resolvePlugin will "hide" this information from core, meaning that "selective cache invalidation" won't have enough information to work properly.

[Js-Brecht]

Definitely a lot more going on than it appears at first glance 😄

for this to work Gatsby core will need to know about relationships between plugins/subplugins to properly clear caches and exporting resolvePlugin will "hide" this information from core, meaning that "selective cache invalidation" won't have enough information to work properly.

I hadn't even thought about Gatsby needing to track what was resolving the sub-plugins! It makes perfect sense, though, how an export wouldn't work.

[pieh]

I'll close this issue, because the problem is already captured in #21592 and there's no point in having duplicates.

The resolvePlugin option is also already mention there (as well as some limitation of this approach)