Loading a remote file through commonjs wouldn't be possible because commonjs is just the module format, not exactly a file loader. Require.js for instance is both: it's an implementation of the AMD module format AND a file loader. browserify for instance is just an implementation of the commonjs module format.
So you'd have to load the file separately, and when it's ready you could require it.
Let's say you have remote_module.js which goes:
exports.module = function(){};
and then somewhere else you'd have to do something like
$.get('http://somewhere.com/remote_module.js').then(function(){
require('remote_module');
// use remote module
});
This also assumes that you'd browserify remote_module.js so it would be nicely declared as a commonjs module and whatever.
Yeah. The trick is to tell
require
"Hey, there's new code!" if you want to do that.