Required peer dependency on babel in @cypress/webpack-preprocessor

[kf6kjg]

My setup uses ts-loader for transpiling, I'm trying to understand why the peer deps for @cypress/webpack-preprocessor are forcing the installation of the unwanted package babel-loader? I understand that NPM doesn't really have a nice way of saying "I need at least one of these peer dependencies", but it does have the ability to have optional peer dependencies.

Digging deeper the main cause of this is that I'm not yet prepared to upgrade this old repo from WebPack 4. This causes a problem since @cypress/webpack-preprocessor@6.0.2 requires a peer of babel-loader@"^8.3 || ^9", which resolves as babel-loader@9.2.1 and requires a peer of webpack@">=5". I was able to work around this by installing babel-loader@8 which allows for WebPack 4, but I shouldn't need to install a package that I don't use and have no intention of using.

Thoughts?