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Why do some minified js files contain calls to "require" function

I've been modernizing some old gulp config where js files are concatenated and then minified by migrating to webpack.
Some of bundles contained libraries such as moment.js and isotope-docs.min.js,
When bundling with webpack I would get error that specific file or path is not found.
For example looking at moment.js
There is require("./locale/"+t) which causes my webpack to fail since i dont have locale directory.
Why would bundled js file have require function when browsers dont understand that?

Before ES modules became a thing, JavaScript did not have an official module syntax. Also, developers wanted to write a library once for both Node.js and the browser. The closest thing available was Node.js's require(), which does not exist on the browser.
So what tools like Browserify and Rollup would do is polyfill an implementation of require() (e.g. wrap the code in a "UMD"). This way, the module worked on any plaform and require() calls work as if in Node.js (its implementation may vary and can be extended because dealing with the filesystem is very different from dealing with a network).

Found a fix, you can just add to webpack confing under module noParse e.g
webpack.config.js
module: {
rules: [ ... ]
noParse: /moment.min.js|isotope-docs.min.js/
}

import requirejs amd module with webpack

I'm using Converse.js and it's prebuilt into the RequireJS/AMD syntax. Including the file from a CDN you could use it like require(['converse'], function (converse) { /* .. */ }). How is it possible to use this with webpack? I would like to bundle converse.js with my webpack output.
I have the file on disk, and want to import it like
import converse from './converse.js';
converse.initialize({ .. });
Webpack picks up the file and bundles it correctly, although it's not useable yet as it throws 'initialize is not a function'. What am I missing?

I suspect the way their bundle is built will not work correctly with how Webpack evaluates modules in a limited context.
From their builds, taking the built AMD module via NPM without dependencies should be parsable by Webpack and it will enable you to provide the dependencies to avoid dupes in the final output.
If all else fails, using the script-loader will evaluate the script in the global context and you'd get the same experience as if you'd have followed their usage guidelines to reference it from a CDN, just don't forget to configure the globals for your linter.

Require third party RequireJS modules with Webpack

I'm working on an application that needs to pull in the ReadiumJS library, which uses AMD modules. The app itself is written in es6 w/ webpack and babel. I've gotten the vendor bundle working correctly, and it's pulling in the built Readium file, but when I try to require any of the modules Webpack says it can't resolve them. Anyone ever do this before with Webpack and RequireJS? Here's some info that may help - not sure what else to include as this is my first time really using Webpack..
Folder Structure
/readium-src
/readium-js
/ *** all readium-specific files and build output (have to pull down repo and build locally)
/node_modules
/src
/app.js -> main entry for my app
/webpack.config.babel.js
webpack.config.js entries
entry: {
vendorJs: [
'jquery',
'angular',
'../readium-src/readium-js/build-output/_single-bundle/readium-js_all.js',
'bootstrap/js/alert.js' //bootstrap js example
],
appJs: './app.js'
}
Trying to require it in app.js
var readiumSharedGlobals = require('readium_shared_js/globals');
I never really got into using RequireJS, so really struggling to understand how to consume that type of module along side other types of modules with webpack. Any help greatly appreciated :)
Update
If I change my app.js to use this instead:
window.rqReadium = require('../readium-src/readium-js/build-output/_single-bundle/readium-js_all.js');
Then it appears to try to load all the modules, but I get a strange error:
Uncaught Error: No IPv6
At this point, I'm unsure of
Should I have to require the entire path like that?
Is this error something from webpack, requirejs, or Readium? Tried debugging, but couldn't find anything useful...
UPDATE 8/12/2016
I think this is related to an issue with a library that Readium is depending on: https://github.com/medialize/URI.js/issues/118
However, I'm still not clear on how to correctly import AMD modules with webpack. Here's what I mean:
Let's say I have an amd module defined in moneyService.amd.js like this:
define('myMoneyService', ['jquery'], function($) {
//contrived simple example...
return function getDollaz() { console.log('$$$'); }
});
Then, in a sibling file, app.js, I want to pull in that file.
//this works
var getDollaz = require('./moneyService.amd.js');
//this works
require(['./moneyService.amd.js'], function(getDollaz) { getDollaz(); }
//this does not
require(['myMoneyService' /*require by its ID vs file name*/], function(getDollaz) {
getDollaz();
}
So, if we cannot require named modules, how would we work with a third party lib's dist file that has all the modules bundled into a single file?

Ok, so there's a repo out there for an Electron ePub reader using Readium, and it's using webpack: https://github.com/clebeaupin/readium-electron This shows a great way to handle pulling in RequireJS modules with webpack.
One super awesome thing I found is that you can specify output.library and output.libraryTarget and webpack will transpose from one module format to another... freaking awesome! So, I can import the requirejs module, set output library and libraryTarget to 'readium-js' and 'commonjs2' respectively, then inside my application code I can do import Readium from 'readium-js';

How do I export my browserified modules for requiring in the browser?

I have several js modules that I bundle with browserify in gulp:
gulp.task('build:js', ['clean:js'], function () {
browserify({
debug: true,
entries: paths.js.src
})
.transform('babelify', { presets: ['es2015'] })
.bundle()
.pipe(source('bundle.js'))
.pipe(buffer())
.pipe(gulp.dest(paths.js.dist));
});
It outputs a single bundle.js. However, when bundled like this I can't require individual modules in the browser. Which I'd like to do, because I don't want to always initiate every module (some are page specific). Instead of that I'd like to be able to use var someModule = require('some-module'); on a page alongside the bundle.
Now I couldn't really find anything about this in the documentation, since it only documents the commandline options (and not the js api). This answer shows that a module can be required and exposed from gulp, but that would expose my entire bundle, and not the modules of which it is composed.
A solution would be to bundle all my modules separately, exclude dependencies (so they won't be duplicated across bundles) and then concatenate that. But that doesn't really seem like a viable solution because:
The modules might have trouble resolving dependencies since everything is bundled separately, and thus dependencies would have to be resolved in-browser. Not ideal and prone to breakage I think.
It is very labour intensive since I use a lot of modules, and each will have to be exported manually in gulp, dependencies excluded and referenced in my templates. There are ways to automate it, but this doesn't exclude shared dependencies.
So how do I solve this? How can I require the bundles of which my js is composed separately in the browser, for client side use?

So what I ended up doing is something else. What I was asking kind of went against the way that browserify works, even though it's possible. Maybe eventually when HTTP2 imports and js modules can be used in all major browsers this'll be easier.
For now, I just have a global bundle for the scripts that run on every page, including all my third party libraries. And then for each page I have an separate entry point with the local modules that it needs. This is so far the most maintainable solution.

Using webpack to generate typescript libraries with typing files

Currently my process for building is:
Write lots of typescript files with ES6 module syntax
Generate an index.ts which re-exports all modules from one point
Compile to CommonJS + System
Output Descriptor/Typing files
This results in an index.js file which re-exports all the internal files without the developer consuming it needing to know about it, as well as a lot of d.ts files which mirror the file structure.
Now this works, but if I were to take this approach to the browser I would need to webpack up all the js or it would be a http request nightmare pulling in all the individual files. Currently this library would be consumed as a dependency for other libraries, so it is not an end point for logic or anything it is a module/library.
Now the main question is with webpack I know I can load TS in and get a commonJS module out, however I cannot find any way to generate d.ts files with webpack. So is there a way for me to use webpack as the compiler/packager in this scenario and have an output my-lib.js and my-lib.d.ts rather than the current approach which yields lots of individual files.
== Extra Clarification on Use Case ==
Just to try and make sure everyone is on the same page here when I say it is a library that would be re-used what I mean is that this is something that would be loaded via npm or jspm or something as a module dependency for other modules.
So for example let us pretend jquery doesn't exist and I am going to create it but write it in typescript for other developers to consume in both JS and TS. Now typescript outputs both js files and d.ts files, the js files are to be used as you would expect, but the d.ts files explain to other typescript files what the types contained within the library are.
So assuming I have developed jquery in TS as listed above, I would then want to publish this output (be it created by webpack or tsc) on npm/jspm/bower etc. So then others can re-use this library in their own projects.
So webpack typically is used to package an "application" if you will, which contains logic and business concerns and is consumed directly as an entry point to a larger set of concerns. In this example it would be used as a compilation and packaging step for a library and would be consumed via var myLib = require("my-lib"); or similar.

Generating the .d.ts files is not related to webpack. With webpack you can use either ts-loader or awesome-typescript-loader. Both of them make use of tsconfig.json. What you need to do is to add declaration: true in your tsconfig.json.
I'd also suggest you to take a look at typescript-library-starter. You'll find how's set up there, including UMD bundle and type definitions :).