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Bruce Axtens
Bruce Axtens

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Sometimes the Typescript CLI seems strangely opaque

#help #typescript

Here's my tsconfig.json

{
  "compileOnSave": true,
  "compilerOptions": {
    "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "target": "ES3",
    "lib": ["ESNext"],
    "strict": false,
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "module": "commonjs",
    "types": ["C:\\Web\\XChecker\\XwChecker\\Rulesets\\d.ts"],
    "removeComments": true
  },
  "include": ["*.ts"]
}
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My project has a number of .ts files and a file of types in d.ts/index.d.ts.

I want to compile just one, JUST ONE, of the .ts files in my project and output it to a file with an .rr extension.

Now the --outFile works but I can't figure out what the CLI is supposed to be told such that all the settings in the tsconfig.json apply. Currently I get a screenful of errors about TS2304: Cannot find name 'blah'

Yeah, need help!

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Bruce Axtens •

To answer my own question, based on the response on StackOverflow, one needs to create a file-specific version of the tsconfig.json and use that when compiling the single file.

So here's the original tsconfig.json:

{
  "compileOnSave": true,
  "compilerOptions": {
    "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "target": "ES3",
    "lib": ["ESNext"],
    "strict": false,
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "module": "system",
    "types": [".\\types"],
    "removeComments": true,
  },
  "include": ["*.ts"]
}
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I now have a separate BOML.tsconfig file (BOML is the name of the single target in this case) which is:

{
  "compileOnSave": true,
  "compilerOptions": {
    "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "target": "ES3",
    "lib": ["ESNext"],
    "strict": false,
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "module": "system",
    "types": [".\\types"],
    "removeComments": true,
    "outFile": "BOML.RR"
  },
  "files": ["BOML.ts"]
}
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To compile: npx tsc -p boml.tsconfig and I get a nice boml.rr at the end

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