microsoft / microsoft/TypeScript

Declaration merging: remove function overloads?

Open
#19,064 13 comments 18 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Awaiting More Feedback Suggestion
Dominant language
Go
Stars
111k
Forks
14.3k
Avg merge
2d 4h
Merged PRs (30d)
132

Description

Let's say one of the libs come with a function like this:

// library:
declare module 'example' {
    interface Animal { }
    export function sayHello(a: Animal);
}

I want to narrow down the type to just Dog. This is my module augmentation:

// app.ts
declare module 'example' {
    interface Dog extends Animal { }
    export function sayHello(a: Dog);
}

This merges the declarations to two function overloads:

sayHello(a: Dog);
sayHello(a: Animal);

I'd like to remove the generic Animal one to get stricter type checking of my code.

I couldn't find if this has been discussed before but I would find it useful quite often. Some examples would be:

  • express headers (string by default, I'd use union of string literals)
  • yargs args (I'd limit them to args specific to my app)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by studying the declaration-merging and module-augmentation examples in the issue, including the overload behavior for express headers and yargs args. Done means a supported way to remove or narrow the original generic overload, with stricter checking for the augmented type.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript
Domain
compilers
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.