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Yeah it's pretty ugly. This whole thing is a prime example of those cases in which maintainers for mostly arbitrary reasons decide on something and then absolut

Yeah it's pretty ugly. This whole thing is a prime example of those cases in which maintainers for mostly arbitrary reasons decide on something and then absolutely ignore all the massive negative feedback they get for this. They'll cite some nebulous technical reasons of why it has to be this way, but if you offer a PR that actually solves the issue that the community complains about, they'll reject it. In this case they decided that tsc won't transpile imports. They just did and it's "policy" and it can't be changed. It doesn't matter if it is awful for compatibility, developer experience, etc. It's just the policy. Issues will be closed. And no, even an optional flag to transpile imports is off the table, even if you write the PR for it. There are many many issues opened related to this in github, but to give an example https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/issues/16577 https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/issues/16577

Chyzwar 4y ago
It is complicated but most user anger should be directed to node.js module group[1]. TS is forced to follow node.js standard. [1] https://github.com/nodejs/modules/issues/323 https://github.com/nodejs/modules/issues/323
- iainmerrick 4y ago
  Hmm, what is it that Node is doing that’s so bad? I don’t understand why that issue is a big problem. This explanation in the comments makes sense to me: Transpilers can add the ability to add extensions at compile time, so a specifier like './file' can be rewritten to './file.js' during compilation along with whatever else is getting converted by the transpiler. It seems sensible for Node to expect fully-qualified imports, just like a browser would. And (to me) it seems sensible that in a language like TypeScript you should be able to import “foo.ts” and it have it transpiled to the correct filename. Now, that does not work in TS because they adamantly refuse to modify any of the emitted JavaScript code at all, with no clear explanation except that it’s long-standing policy. Instead they expect you to import “foo.js” in TypeScript, even though that file doesn’t exist until after compilation. That’s a problem, and it seems like it’s caused by the TS team, not Node.
  - Chyzwar 4y ago
    Browsers never required extensions, see https://unpkg.com/ https://unpkg.com/ You can load scripts in browser just fine without extension. > Now, that does not work in TS because they adamantly refuse to modify any of the emitted JavaScript code at all, with no clear explanation except that it’s long-standing policy. Instead they expect you to import “foo.js” in TypeScript, even though that file doesn’t exist until after compilation. That’s a problem, and it seems like it’s caused by the TS team, not Node. I think they should provide a better explainer. But node.js resolution algorithms is already incredibly complicated, and adding path rewriting to typescript is not going to make it better. There are things like dynamic import and third part libraries. Typescript would need to either analyze whole of project node_modules or bundle custom runtime resolver like webpack breaking compact with deno and friends. Imagine situation: import lib from 'somelib/subpath' How TS would know that some lib have extension in subpath and it need to add/remove js ext? https://nodejs.org/api/packages.html#extensions-in-subpaths https://nodejs.org/api/packages.html#extensions-in-subpaths What if typescript is running in deno/bum or wasm? > Hmm, what is it that Node is doing that’s so bad? I don’t understand why that issue is a big problem. My conclusion is that successful projects without BDFL are prone to corporate takeovers. You have people that working in corporations without writing code and want to make political career as "core" team member of project.
    - zarzavat 4y ago
      TS can already perform complicated refactorings, such as renaming all imports in a project when you rename a file in vscode. So they definitely have all the information they need already. Node requiring the .js is more understandable, as that actually affects runtime performance: if the name isn’t fully qualified in source then node needs to stat() more paths during resolution. > What if typescript is running in deno/bum or wasm? Every TS project already needs a tsconfig.json to specify what permutation of module system configurations it is using.
      - Chyzwar 4y ago
        > Node requiring the .js is more understandable, as that actually affects runtime performance: if the name isn’t fully qualified in source then node needs to stat() more paths during resolution. Performance is affected only during startup by maybe few milliseconds. This is a major breaking change to module resolution made by node.js. Why TS should paper over change that was made by node.js. > TS can already perform complicated refactorings, such as renaming all imports in a project when you rename a file in vscode. So they definitely have all the information they need already. Some things are supported by tsserver not typescript compiler. Fixing this in TS is only addressing the problem partially and is shifting the problem into tools developers.

Chyzwar 4y ago

It is complicated but most user anger should be directed to node.js module group[1]. TS is forced to follow node.js standard. [1] https://github.com/nodejs/modules/issues/323 https://github.com/nodejs/modules/issues/323

iainmerrick 4y ago
Hmm, what is it that Node is doing that’s so bad? I don’t understand why that issue is a big problem. This explanation in the comments makes sense to me: Transpilers can add the ability to add extensions at compile time, so a specifier like './file' can be rewritten to './file.js' during compilation along with whatever else is getting converted by the transpiler. It seems sensible for Node to expect fully-qualified imports, just like a browser would. And (to me) it seems sensible that in a language like TypeScript you should be able to import “foo.ts” and it have it transpiled to the correct filename. Now, that does not work in TS because they adamantly refuse to modify any of the emitted JavaScript code at all, with no clear explanation except that it’s long-standing policy. Instead they expect you to import “foo.js” in TypeScript, even though that file doesn’t exist until after compilation. That’s a problem, and it seems like it’s caused by the TS team, not Node.
- Chyzwar 4y ago
  Browsers never required extensions, see https://unpkg.com/ https://unpkg.com/ You can load scripts in browser just fine without extension. > Now, that does not work in TS because they adamantly refuse to modify any of the emitted JavaScript code at all, with no clear explanation except that it’s long-standing policy. Instead they expect you to import “foo.js” in TypeScript, even though that file doesn’t exist until after compilation. That’s a problem, and it seems like it’s caused by the TS team, not Node. I think they should provide a better explainer. But node.js resolution algorithms is already incredibly complicated, and adding path rewriting to typescript is not going to make it better. There are things like dynamic import and third part libraries. Typescript would need to either analyze whole of project node_modules or bundle custom runtime resolver like webpack breaking compact with deno and friends. Imagine situation: import lib from 'somelib/subpath' How TS would know that some lib have extension in subpath and it need to add/remove js ext? https://nodejs.org/api/packages.html#extensions-in-subpaths https://nodejs.org/api/packages.html#extensions-in-subpaths What if typescript is running in deno/bum or wasm? > Hmm, what is it that Node is doing that’s so bad? I don’t understand why that issue is a big problem. My conclusion is that successful projects without BDFL are prone to corporate takeovers. You have people that working in corporations without writing code and want to make political career as "core" team member of project.
  - zarzavat 4y ago
    TS can already perform complicated refactorings, such as renaming all imports in a project when you rename a file in vscode. So they definitely have all the information they need already. Node requiring the .js is more understandable, as that actually affects runtime performance: if the name isn’t fully qualified in source then node needs to stat() more paths during resolution. > What if typescript is running in deno/bum or wasm? Every TS project already needs a tsconfig.json to specify what permutation of module system configurations it is using.
    - Chyzwar 4y ago
      > Node requiring the .js is more understandable, as that actually affects runtime performance: if the name isn’t fully qualified in source then node needs to stat() more paths during resolution. Performance is affected only during startup by maybe few milliseconds. This is a major breaking change to module resolution made by node.js. Why TS should paper over change that was made by node.js. > TS can already perform complicated refactorings, such as renaming all imports in a project when you rename a file in vscode. So they definitely have all the information they need already. Some things are supported by tsserver not typescript compiler. Fixing this in TS is only addressing the problem partially and is shifting the problem into tools developers.