microsoft / microsoft/TypeScript

Can references path support package name?

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#44,034 5 comments 3 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Description

Suggestion

🔍 Search Terms

projectReference, reference path, package name

✅ Viability Checklist

My suggestion meets these guidelines:

  • This wouldn't be a breaking change in existing TypeScript/JavaScript code
  • This wouldn't change the runtime behavior of existing JavaScript code
  • This could be implemented without emitting different JS based on the types of the expressions
  • This isn't a runtime feature (e.g. library functionality, non-ECMAScript syntax with JavaScript output, new syntax sugar for JS, etc.)
  • This feature would agree with the rest of TypeScript's Design Goals.

⭐ Suggestion

add package name path support in tsconfig references path

📃 Motivating Example

originally, when we use project in a complex repo, path config can be nasty that only relative path is supported. so we have config like blow in our tsconfig.json.

{
"references": [
    { "path": "../libs/pkg-a" },
    { "path": "../../../libraries/pkg-b" },
    { "path": "../../../libraries/pkg-c/tsconfig.es.json" }
  ]
}

This is hard to trace the referenced config path, and also leads extra job when moving this package around in the repo.
After implementation of package name support, above config can be simplified to

{
"references": [
    { "path": "@some/pkg-a" },
    { "path": "@some-other/pkg-b" },
    { "path": "@some-other/pkg-c/tsconfig.es.json" }
  ]
}

💻 Use Cases

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 reviewing the project references configuration in tsconfig.json and how the current relative path values identify referenced configs. Define how package names, including package subpaths such as tsconfig.es.json, should resolve; done means the example references work without relative paths and existing reference behavior remains supported.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

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

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