webpack - webpack.config.js - import path from "path"; ^^^^^^ SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module

 I was trying different ways to exclude node_modules / external libraries from being include / packaged together in my dist folder. So i tried out this settings 

webpack.config.js 

import path from "path";

import { Configuration } from "webpack";

const config: Configuration = {

  entry: "./src/index.ts",

To resolve this error, I had to go back to the good old webpack.config.js that look something like this

const path = require('path');

var nodeExternals = require('webpack-node-externals');

module.exports = {

  entry: './src/index.ts',

  target: 'node', // use require() & use NodeJs CommonJS style

  externals: [nodeExternals()], // in order to ignore all modules in node_modules folder

  externalsPresets: {

      node: true // in order to ignore built-in modules like path, fs, etc.

  },

  module: {

    rules: [

      {

        test: /\.tsx?$/,

        use: 'ts-loader',

        exclude: /node_modules/,

      },

    ],

  },

  resolve: {

    extensions: ['.tsx', '.ts', '.js'],

  },

  output: {

    filename: 'index.js',

    path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist'),

  },

};