gulp-webpack can't resolve node modules

Question

building a modern Angular app here.

I am using gulp-webpack for fast development builds. I need webpack for my typescript bundling because I am obviously relying on some node modules. But weirdly enough, gulp-webpack doesn't seem to be automatically resolving imports to my node_modules directory! As a consequence, it throws about a million typescript errors saying it can't find the modules, and my bundle doesn't have, for example, angular in it.

Here's my (abbreviated) gulpfile:

var gulp = require('gulp')
var path = require('path');
// var concat = require('gulp-concat')
var expect = require('gulp-expect-file')
var plumber = require('gulp-plumber')
var sourcemaps = require('gulp-sourcemaps')
// var uglify = require('gulp-uglify')

var webpack = require('gulp-webpack')
var sass = require('gulp-sass')
var nodemon = require('gulp-nodemon')
var ts = require('gulp-typescript')
var del = require('del')
var rename = require('gulp-rename')
var inject = require('gulp-inject-string')
// Client-side javascript to single js file
gulp.task('js', function () 
{
    gulp.safeSrc('src/app/main.ts')
        .pipe(sourcemaps.init())
        .pipe(webpack({
        context: __dirname,
        entry: ['./src/app/main'],
        resolve: {
            modulesDirectories: ["./node_modules"],
            extensions: ['.ts', '.js']
        },
        resolveLoader: {
            root: path.resolve(__dirname, 'node_modules')
        },
        output: {
            filename: "bundle.js"
        },
        module: {
            loaders: [
                {
                test: /\.js$/,
                loader: 'babel-loader'
                },
                {
                test: /\.ts$/,
                loader: 'ts-loader'
                }
            ],
        },
    }))
        .pipe(sourcemaps.write())
   .pipe(gulp.dest('public'))
})

And here's my app.component.ts -- I start getting errors right away with import 'zone.js'

ERROR in ./src/app/app.component.ts Module not found: Error: Cannot resolve module 'zone.js' in C:\appdir\src\app @ ./src/app/app.component.ts 12:0-18

import 'zone.js';
import 'reflect-metadata';
import { Component } from '@angular/core';

import { Observable } from 'rxjs/Rx';
import { Store } from '@ngrx/store';
import { AppStore } from '../models/application-store';
import { AuthSvc } from './auth/auth.svc';

import { Action } from './actions'

@Component({
  selector: 'my-app',
  template: `
  <div class="app">
     <main-header>
     </main-header>
     <router-outlet></router-outlet>
  </div>`

})

export class AppComponent {
   error: any;
   showNgFor = false; 
   constructor ()
   {

   }
}

What's going on?

Answer 1

gulp-webpack is an absolutely ancient npm package.

The solution here is to use webpack-stream, which is up to date with webpack 3.0