Add ESM support and dual-mode imports to Node.js bindings

README.md

@@ -37,6 +37,18 @@ published as packages to facilitate their use in other projects.
 * [Ruby](ruby/README.md)
 * [Golang](golang/README.md)
 
+## Development
+
+If you're contributing to this project or regenerating the bindings, you'll need to initialize the git submodules after cloning:
+
+```bash
+git submodule update --init --recursive
+```
+
+This downloads the base GTFS-realtime protocol buffer specification from the [google/transit](https://github.com/google/transit) repository, which is required for building the language bindings.
+
+For language-specific build instructions, see the UPDATING.md file in each language directory.
+
 ## Other Languages
 
 We don't provide generated code for C++, use the official protoc compiler for that (from [here](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/downloads) or [here](https://github.com/google/protobuf))

UPDATING.md

@@ -5,6 +5,18 @@ When
 is updated, the various languages bindings must be regenerated, packaged, and
 deployed.
 
+## Prerequisites
+
+If you've just cloned the repository, initialize the git submodules first:
+
+```bash
+git submodule update --init --recursive
+```
+
+This is required because the bindings depend on the base GTFS-realtime proto files from the `gtfs-spec` submodule.
+
+## Updating Process
+
 First step is to copy the latest version of `gtfs-realtime.proto` into project.
 Then, follow the instructions in each individual UPDATING.md file for each
 language type. 

nodejs/UPDATING.md

@@ -1,5 +1,17 @@
 # How-To Update Bindings When gtfs-realtime.proto Changes
 
+## Prerequisites
+
+If you've just cloned the repository, initialize the git submodules first:
+
+```
+git submodule update --init --recursive
+```
+
+This is required because the build process depends on the base GTFS-realtime proto files from the `gtfs-spec` submodule.
+
+## Building
+
 Regenerate the language binding source from gtfs-realtime.proto.
 
 ```
@@ -17,7 +29,7 @@ Test the generated code:
 npm run test
 ```
 
-Note that, to maintain compatability with CommonJS typescript projects, we need to manually change the `Long` type to the stub type included in the ProtobufJS library. 
+**Note:** The build script automatically replaces `import Long = require("long")` with `import { Long } from "protobufjs"` in the TypeScript definition files. This maintains compatibility with CommonJS TypeScript projects by using the Long stub type included in the ProtobufJS library instead of requiring a separate "long" package. 
 
 Update the version number in `package.json`.