The compiler uses metadata to represent what it statically knows about
various expressions in a program. Occasionally, expressions in the program
for which metadata is extracted may contain sub-expressions which are not
representable in metadata. One such construct is an arrow function.
The compiler does not always need to understand such expressions completely.
For example, for a provider defined with `useValue`, the compiler does not
need to understand the value at all, only the outer provider definition. In
this case, the compiler employs a technique known as "expression lowering",
where it rewrites the provider expression into one that can be represented
in metadata. Chiefly, this involves extracting out the dynamic part (the
`useValue` expression) into an exported constant.
Lowering is applied through a heuristic, which considers the containing
statement as well as the field name of the expression.
Previously, this heuristic was not completely accurate in the case of
route definitions and the `loadChildren` field, which is lowered. If the
route definition using `loadChildren` existed inside a decorator invocation,
lowering was performed correctly. However, if it existed inside a standalone
variable declaration with an export keyword, the heuristic would conclude
that lowering was unnecessary. For ordinary providers this is true; however
the compiler attempts to fully understand the ROUTES token and thus even if
an array of routes is declared in an exported variable, any `loadChildren`
expressions within still need to be lowered.
This commit enables lowering of already exported variables under a limited
set of conditions (where the initializer expression is of a specific form).
This should enable the use of `loadChildren` in route definitions.
PR Close#30038
8e73f9b0aa