Babel 6 regeneratorRuntime is not defined

Question

I\'m trying to use async, await from scratch on Babel 6, but I\'m getting regeneratorRuntime is not defined.

.babelrc file

{
    \"presets\": [ \"es2         


        

Answer 1

This error is caused when async/await functions are used without the proper Babel plugins. As of March 2020, the following should be all you need to do. (@babel/polyfill and a lot of the accepted solutions have been deprecated in Babel. Read more in the Babel docs.)

In the command line, type:

npm install --save-dev @babel/plugin-transform-runtime

In your babel.config.js file, add this plugin @babel/plugin-transform-runtime. Note: The below example includes the other presets and plugins I have for a small React/Node/Express project I worked on recently:

module.exports = {
  presets: ['@babel/preset-react', '@babel/preset-env'],
  plugins: ['@babel/plugin-proposal-class-properties', 
  '@babel/plugin-transform-runtime'],
};

Answer 2

babel-regenerator-runtime is now deprecated, instead one should use regenerator-runtime.

To use the runtime generator with webpack and babel v7:

install regenerator-runtime:

npm i -D regenerator-runtime

And then add within webpack configuration :

entry: [
  'regenerator-runtime/runtime',
  YOUR_APP_ENTRY
]

Answer 3

I had this problem in Chrome. Similar to RienNeVaPlu͢s’s answer, this solved it for me:

npm install --save-dev regenerator-runtime

Then in my code:

import 'regenerator-runtime/runtime';

Happy to avoid the extra 200 kB from babel-polyfill.

Answer 4

The targeted browsers I need to support already support async/await, but when writing mocha tests, without the proper setting I still got this error.

Most of the articles I googled are outdated, including the accepted answer and high voted answers here, i.e. you don't need polyfill, babel-regenerator-runtime, babel-plugin-transform-runtime. etc. if your target browser(s) already supports async/await (of course if not you need polyfill)

I don't want to use webpack either.

Tyler Long's answer is actually on the right track since he suggested babel-preset-env (but I omitted it first as he mentioned polifill at the beginning). I still got the ReferenceError: regeneratorRuntime is not defined at the first then I realized it was because I didn't set the target. After setting the target for node I fix the regeneratorRuntime error：

  "scripts": {
    //"test": "mocha --compilers js:babel-core/register"
    //https://github.com/mochajs/mocha/wiki/compilers-deprecation
    "test": "mocha --require babel-core/register"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "babel-core": "^6.26.3",
    "babel-preset-env": "^1.7.0",
    "mocha": "^5.2.0"
  },
  //better to set it .bablerc, I list it here for brevity and it works too.
  "babel": {
    "presets": [
      ["env",{
        "targets": {
          "node": "current"
           "chrome": 66,
           "firefox": 60,
        },
        "debug":true
      }]
    ]
  }

Answer 5

If you are building an app, you just need the @babel/preset-env and @babel/polyfill:

npm i -D @babel/preset-env
npm i @babel/polyfill

(Note: you don't need to install the core-js and regenerator-runtime packages because they both will have been installed by the @babel/polyfill)

Then in .babelrc:

{
  "presets": [
    [
      "@babel/preset-env",
      {
        "useBuiltIns": "entry"  // this is the key. use 'usage' for further codesize reduction, but it's still 'experimental'
      }
    ]
  ]
}

Now set your target environments. Here, we do it in the .browserslistrc file:

# Browsers that we support

>0.2%
not dead
not ie <= 11
not op_mini all

Finally, if you went with useBuiltIns: "entry", put import @babel/polyfill at the top of your entry file. Otherwise, you are done.

Using this method will selectively import those polyfills and the 'regenerator-runtime' file(fixing your regeneratorRuntime is not defined issue here) ONLY if they are needed by any of your target environments/browsers.

Answer 6

Most of these answers recommend solutions for dealing with this error using WebPack. But in case anyone is using RollUp (like I am), here is what finally worked for me (just a heads-up and bundling this polyfill ads about 10k tot he output size):

.babelrc

{
    "presets": [
        [
            "env",
            {
                "modules": false,
                "targets": {
                    "browsers": ["last 2 versions"]
                }
            }
        ]
    ],
    "plugins": ["external-helpers",
        [
            "transform-runtime",
            {
                "polyfill": false,
                "regenerator": true
            }
        ]]
}

rollup.config.js

import resolve from 'rollup-plugin-node-resolve';
import babel from 'rollup-plugin-babel';
import uglify from 'rollup-plugin-uglify';
import commonjs from 'rollup-plugin-commonjs';


export default {
    input: 'src/entry.js',
    output: {
        file: 'dist/bundle.js',
        format: 'umd',
        name: 'MyCoolLib',
        exports: 'named'
    },
    sourcemap: true,
    plugins: [
        commonjs({
            // polyfill async/await
            'node_modules/babel-runtime/helpers/asyncToGenerator.js': ['default']
        }),
        resolve(),
        babel({
            runtimeHelpers: true,
            exclude: 'node_modules/**', // only transpile our source code
        }),
        uglify()

    ]
};