The "very obvious thing" you're missing is that you can create globals in Node.js, and in the Browserify environment just the same. Either do it explicitly by using global.Backbone = require('/backbone')
, or less explicit by just doing Backbone = require('/backbone')
(without var
in front).
Note that in the browser, the global
object is in fact the window
object. However, attaching to the window
object would mean you lose compatibility with Node.js, because that typically doesn't have a global variable window
defined.