I'd be curios if we could "autoload" globals with https://webpack.js.org/plugins/provide-plugin/ or a custom loader?

We can, but it's probably a bit too much work. As I see it, you have to individually provide each polyfill like this:

plugins: [
 new webpack.ProvidePlugin({
 setTimeout: ['@nativescript/core/timer', 'setTimeout'],
 setInterval: ['@nativescript/core/timer', 'setInterval'],
 // keep going one for each function
 })
]

and I don't think calling global.setTimeout will work at all.

I believe this can be done better with adding the polyfills to the application entrypoint:

entry: {
 bundle: ['@nativescript/core/globals/index.ts', './src/main.ts']
}

webpack has a couple of ways of doing it, maybe this one can work too: https://webpack.js.org/guides/shimming/#global-exports

@edusperoni I don't think that'd be a huge deal given the new webpack implementation I'm working on - we can extract a function that generates that object for all globals if we decide to go that route. I think it would be convenient!

The entry way is also feasible as long as it does it in the right order?

Definitely worth trying the different options before we decide on either.

The entry way is also feasible as long as it does it in the right order?

Yeah. That's what we're going for with the angular webpack:

const entries = [ './src/main.ts' ];
if(fs.existsSync('./src/polyfills.tns.ts') { // .tns depending on code sharing or not
 entries.unshift('./src/polyfills.tns.ts');
}
...
entry: {
 bundle: entries
}

This will allow us to have a place where the developer can also add some polyfills of their own, like nativescript-websockets and others.