See this issue:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34816304/why-does-adding-this-require-import-stop-node-js-outputing-to-the-console/34826050#34826050

This took me ages to get to the bottom of. no error messages to indicate I was doing something stupid just no output at all in the js file.
Suggest that an error message is displayed when we are compiling external modules with an invalid option like --out or --outFile