microsoft / microsoft/TypeScript

If node_modules is excluded by default, it should not be part of a confusing documentation example

Open
#30,632 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

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

Description

Hi,
This is not a code issue but documentation that leads to confusion. By default node_modules folder is excluded for tsc. This is good (I guess), but the following documentation https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/tsconfig-json.html has an example using node_modules as a folder to exclude. Personally I think this example was very badly picked because it leads to think that you need to exclude "node_modules" explicitly (which I was doind in all my projects for that reason). You need to read the full document to notice that. It is confusing.

PS: This led to confusion as you can see in other typescript project (https://github.com/TypeStrong/ts-loader/issues/278)

Thanks for the great typescript thing by the way!

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 with the tsconfig.json handbook page linked in the issue and inspect the example that uses node_modules in exclude. Revise the example or its explanation so readers do not infer that node_modules must be explicitly excluded, then verify the surrounding documentation remains accurate.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
1/5
Estimated time
Under an hour
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.