Why is ic-ajax not defined within certain functions in Ember CLI?

Forgive my ignorance, but I can't get ic-ajax working inside of certain functions.

Specifically, I'd like to get a test like this working, but for Ember CLI: e.g. http://coderberry.herokuapp.com/testing-your-ember-application#30

I can call ajax inside Ember.Object.Extend and outside of functions and object definitions, but not in modules, tests, or Ember.Route's model function.

Am I misunderstanding something or is there a misconfiguration in my app?

I've figured out that within functions I can do:

ajax = require('ic-ajax')['default'];
defineFixture = require('ic-ajax')['defineFixture'];

but I'm pretty sure import at the top of the file is supposed to work.

I'm experiencing this on Ember 0.40.0 (both in my existing app and a fresh app). See below for more specifics where I'm finding it undefined. Setting var ajax = icAjaxRaw outside of the functions does not work either. I'm at a bit of a loose end so any help you could give in this regard would be great.

users-test.js:

import ajax from 'ic-ajax';
import { raw as icAjaxRaw } from 'ic-ajax';
import { defineFixture as icAjaxDefineFixture } from 'ic-ajax';

debugger;

---> icAjaxDefineFixture IS defined here

module('Users', {
  setup: function() {

    App = startApp();
    debugger;

icAjaxDefineFixture --> UNDEFINED

  },
  teardown: function() {
    Ember.run(App, App.destroy);
  }
});

test("Sign in", function() {

icAjaxDefineFixture --> UNDEFINED

  expect(1);
  visit('/users/sign-in').then(function() {
    equal(find('form').length, 1, "Sign in page contains a form");
  });
});

Brocfile.js (I don't think these are actually needed with the new ember-cli-ic-ajax addon):

app.import('vendor/ic-ajax/dist/named-amd/main.js', {
  exports: {
    'ic-ajax': [
      'default',
      'defineFixture',
      'lookupFixture',
      'raw',
      'request',
    ]
  }
});

Solution

Had the same problem. Turns out it is a Chrome debugger optimization issue, checkout this blog post http://johnkpaul.com/blog/2013/04/03/javascript-debugger-surprises/

While debugging, if you try to use a variable from a closure scope in the console, that wasn’t actually used in the source, you’ll be surprised by ReferenceErrors. This is because JavaScript debuggers optimize the hell out of your code and will remove variables from the Lexical Environment of a function if they are unused.

To play around in debugger, I've just typed ajax; inside of the closure and variable magically appeared.