This is my stab at fixing #1591, as described in #1591 (comment):

Would it be at all feasible to make __export + __markAsModule a bit smarter => if there's already a correct __esModule marker in all, just let it be? If it's incorrect, I guess the only option would be to throw a runtime error, which would be a slight regression compared to the current compile-time error. But maybe that's good enough?

This PR removes the "__esModule is reserved" check, and updates __export + __markAsModule to only define __esModule if it doesn't exist yet.

I think this might only be problematic if the author of the script uses the __esModule export "incorrectly" (i.e., as anything other than an ESM marker). Originally, as stated in my comment, I was hoping to have __markAsModule detect that (__esModule exists, but evaluated to anything but true) and throw a runtime error... But turns out at the time of __export, we don't yet know the value of __esModule:

$ cat MRE.js
export const __esModule = "foo"

$ echo 'console.log(require("./MRE.js"))' | ./esbuild --bundle
(() => {
  var __defProp = Object.defineProperty;
  var __hasOwnProp = Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty;
  var __markAsModule = (target) => !__hasOwnProp.call(target, "__esModule") && __defProp(target, "__esModule", { value: true });
  var __require = typeof require !== "undefined" ? require : (x) => {
    throw new Error('Dynamic require of "' + x + '" is not supported');
  };
  var __esm = (fn, res) => function __init() {
    return fn && (res = (0, fn[Object.keys(fn)[0]])(fn = 0)), res;
  };
  var __export = (target, all) => {
    for (var name in all)
      __defProp(target, name, { get: all[name], enumerable: true });
    __markAsModule(target);
  };

  // MRE.js
  var MRE_exports = {};
  __export(MRE_exports, {
    __esModule: () => __esModule
  });
  var __esModule;
  var init_MRE = __esm({
    "MRE.js"() {
      __esModule = "foo";
    }
  });

  // <stdin>
  console.log((init_MRE(), MRE_exports));
})();

You can see __export happens before init_MRE(), and it's init_MRE that actually sets the value of __esModule.

So no runtime error for now, and if we still want it, I could use a hint/ideas on how to approach that.