Cannot get ava transpile to work with relatively-imported files

Question

The ES6 import works in this file, but generates an unexpected token import error when I'm importing relative files such as my Mongoose User model.

import mongoose from 'mongoose';
^^^^^^

SyntaxError: Unexpected token import

.babelrc

{
  "presets": [
    ["es2015", { "modules": false }]
  ],
  "plugins": [
    "transform-object-rest-spread",
    "transform-async-to-generator",
    "transform-export-extensions"
  ]
}

package.json

 "ava": {
    "require": [
      "babel-register"
    ]
  }

users.test.js

import test from 'ava'
import axios from 'axios'

import User from '../../models/user'
import { USER_REGISTRATION_ROUTES } from '../helpers/_test.properties.js'

test('user registration api works', async function (t) {
  const email = `test${Date.now()}@example.com`

  const userRegistrationData = {
    email,
    first_name: "john",
    last_name: "doe",
    password: "password"
  }

  await axios.post(USER_REGISTRATION_ROUTES, userRegistrationData)
    .then(response => {
      const data = response.data.data
      const user = data.user
      t.deepEqual(response.status, 200, 'Verify: response is successful')
      t.deepEqual(data.registered, true, 'Verify: user is registered')
      t.truthy(Object.keys(user).length > 0,
        'Verify: if registered, user object is returned')
      t.truthy(user.authentication_token,
        'Verify: token is generated on successful registration')
    })
    .catch((err) => {
      t.fail(`Cannot make requst to register user ${err}`)
    })

  User.remove({ email }, function (err) {
    if (err) {
      console.log('error')
    } else {
      console.log('success deleting test user')
    }
  })
})

Answer 1

The answer that worked for me was the following suggested by Serge Seletskyy here. The es2017 preset is required for ES2017 features such as async await.

.babelrc

{
  "presets": [
    "es2017",
    "@ava/stage-4",
    "stage-3"
  ],
  "plugins": [
    "transform-runtime"
  ]
}

package.json

"ava": {
  "require": [
    "babel-register"
  ],
  "babel": "inherit"
}

install modules

yarn add babel-register babel-preset-es2017 @ava/babel-preset-stage-4 babel-plugin-transform-runtime babel-preset-stage-3 --dev

Running ./node_modules/.bin/ava --verbose should now work