Extend the tsc --listFiles option to specify an output file for the list

🔍 Search Terms

listFiles redirect

✅ Viability Checklist

• 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 isn't a request to add a new utility type: https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/No-New-Utility-Types
• This feature would agree with the rest of our Design Goals: https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/TypeScript-Design-Goals

⭐ Suggestion

I would like to be able to separate the output from the listFiles option from the rest of the tsc output (eg. compilation errors). I think the easiest way to do this would be to allow an output file to be specified.

📃 Motivating Example

While integrating typescript scripts into a make build process, I wanted to generate dependency files to facilitate incremental builds. Initially I tried running with the listFiles flag and capturing the output to create the dependency files to include in my makefile, however I quickly ran into the following issues:

1. Compilation errors and the file list are both output to stdout
2. By default capturing the output of a subshell stops it being output to the console

My initial solution was to run tsc twice, once with --listFiles --noEmit and then again without those options. This resulted in excessive build times as I needed to do this for lots of scripts.

For now I have solved the issue with the following bash script that attempts to extract the compilation output from the listFiles output:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -e

INPUT_DIR=$1
DEPS_FILE=$2

SQL_SCRIPT=$INPUT_DIR/sql/test.sql

rm -rf "${INPUT_DIR:?}/"lib
if INPUT_FILES=$(npx tsc --project "$INPUT_DIR"/tsconfig.json --listFiles); then
  echo "$SQL_SCRIPT: $(echo "$INPUT_FILES" | sed 's/$/ \\/')" > "$DEPS_FILE"
  cd "$INPUT_DIR"/lib
  node index.js
else
  EXIT_CODE=$?
  # the following assumes that all important compilation output contains the text ': error'
  echo "$INPUT_FILES" | grep ": error"
  exit $EXIT_CODE
fi

However it would be much simpler if I could separate the listFiles output using the tsc command, eg:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -e

INPUT_DIR=$1
DEPS_FILE=$2

SQL_SCRIPT=$INPUT_DIR/sql/test.sql

rm -rf "${INPUT_DIR:?}/"lib
npx tsc --project "$INPUT_DIR"/tsconfig.json --listFilesTo $INPUT_DIR/ts/deps
echo "$SQL_SCRIPT: $(sed 's/$/ \\/' $INPUT_DIR/ts/deps)" > "$DEPS_FILE"
cd "$INPUT_DIR"/lib
node index.js

💻 Use Cases

1. What do you want to use this for? : I want to simply integrate the listFiles output into a make based build environment
2. What shortcomings exist with current approaches? : The listFiles and compilation error outputs are mixed together
3. What workarounds are you using in the meantime? : A complicated shell script that tries to extract the compilation output from the listFiles output

Inizia con il comando tsc e la gestione esistente di --listFiles, usando lo script bash motivante e l’invocazione di tsconfig come contesto comportamentale. Definisci come un’opzione per il file di output debba separare l’elenco dei file dai diagnostici di compilazione, quindi aggiungi la copertura per le compilazioni riuscite e fallite e verifica il file delle dipendenze generato.