TypeScript Without Transpilation (2021)

#1

Post by berlam » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 9:19 AM UTC

TypeScript Without Transpilation (2021)
incrementalelm.com

Re: TypeScript Without Transpilation (2021)

#2

Post by a-ungurianu » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 12:37 PM UTC

JSDoc can get you pretty far, but it can be clumsy sometimes. There’s a [TC39 proposal](https://github.com/tc39/proposal-type-annotations) to allow types to live in JS code and be treated as comments (similar with Python types today)

Re: TypeScript Without Transpilation (2021)

#3

Post by franky47 » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 12:56 PM UTC

Sorry for being that guy, but this should probably be called "typechecking without transpilation".

What ends up being written is not TypeScript syntax (which does require transpilation to run).

JSDoc is awesome for incremental adoption though, I've migrated a few codebases this way without too much pain.

Re: TypeScript Without Transpilation (2021)

#4

Post by jchanimal » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 1:00 PM UTC

Does anyone know if I have a TypeScript project, is there an automated process to turn it into this format this article describes? Eject for TS, I guess.

Re: TypeScript Without Transpilation (2021)

#5

Post by iraldir » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

jchanimal wrote: post #4

Does anyone know if I have a TypeScript project, is there an automated process to turn it into this format this article describes? Eject for TS, I guess.

GPT-4 would probably do a good job at that if the code is not sensitive

Re: TypeScript Without Transpilation (2021)

#6

Post by antihero » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 1:17 PM UTC

franky47 wrote: post #3

Sorry for being that guy, but this should probably be called "typechecking without transpilation". What ends up being written is not TypeScript syntax (which does require transpilation to run). JSDoc is awesome for incremental adoption though, I've migrated a few codebases this way without too much pain.

Is there some command you can run to rewrite all the JSDoc as actual TypeScript?

Re: TypeScript Without Transpilation (2021)

#7

Post by alexlur » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 1:24 PM UTC

antihero wrote: post #6

franky47 wrote: post #3

Sorry for being that guy, but this should probably be called "typechecking without transpilation". What ends up being written is not TypeScript syntax (which does require transpilation to run). JSDoc is awesome for incremental adoption though, I've migrated a few codebases this way without too much pain.

Is there some command you can run to rewrite all the JSDoc as actual TypeScript?

Programmatically yes: https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/blob/28cd1fbd13b8d09...

You just need to call this from somewhere like ts-morph.

Re: TypeScript Without Transpilation (2021)

#8

Post by Firmwarrior » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 1:29 PM UTC

iraldir wrote: post #5

jchanimal wrote: post #4

Does anyone know if I have a TypeScript project, is there an automated process to turn it into this format this article describes? Eject for TS, I guess.

GPT-4 would probably do a good job at that if the code is not sensitive

Is there some way to load an entire large project into gpt4? Or do you mean to have it translate one file at a time without context?

Re: TypeScript Without Transpilation (2021)

#9

Post by bandergirl » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 1:35 PM UTC

franky47 wrote: post #3

Sorry for being that guy, but this should probably be called "typechecking without transpilation". What ends up being written is not TypeScript syntax (which does require transpilation to run). JSDoc is awesome for incremental adoption though, I've migrated a few codebases this way without too much pain.

Not TypeScript the language, but TypeScript the typechecker program. “Typescript without transpilation” is still perfectly accurate.

Re: TypeScript Without Transpilation (2021)

#10

Post by afavour » Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 1:37 PM UTC

I've found a happy medium to be annotating functions etc with JSDoc style comments but keeping interfaces etc. in a .d.ts file. The Typescript compiler is able to import it from a .js file just fine.