TypeScript project with references

Question

I use project references to reference "shared" project from "front" and "back" ones.

tsc -v: Version 3.3.3

Project structure:

./{MY_PROJECT}.code-workspace   /* the only file in this level */
./back
./back/tsconfig.json
./shared/src/
./shared/
./shared/tsconfig.json
./shared/src/
./front
./front/tsconfig.json
./front/src

I am tring to import a module to ./front/src/article-view-model.ts from the shared project:

import Article from "@shared/src/article";            // alias path
import Article from "../../shared/src/article"; // full relative path
export default class ArticleViewModel {
}

The following errors are shown immediately in VS Code GUI:

For alias path:

Cannot find module '@shared/src/article'. ts(2307)

For full relative path:

Output file '../../shared/src/article' has not been built from source file 'c:/{SOMEWHERE_IN_MY_PC}/shared/src/article.ts'. ts(6305)

Intellisense (VS Code) does work for both alias and relative options:

If i try ignore the errors and build, it fails with that:

C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\bin\node_modules\typescript\lib\tsc.js:1296 throw e; ^

Error: Debug Failure. False expression. at mergeSymbol (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\bin\node_modules\typescript\lib\tsc.js:25861:26) at C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\bin\node_modules\typescript\lib\tsc.js:25960:47 at Map.forEach () at mergeSymbolTable (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\bin\node_modules\typescript\lib\tsc.js:25958:20) at initializeTypeChecker (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\bin\node_modules\typescript\lib\tsc.js:48653:21) at Object.createTypeChecker (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\bin\node_modules\typescript\lib\tsc.js:25711:9) at getDiagnosticsProducingTypeChecker (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\bin\node_modules\typescript\lib\tsc.js:71398:93) at Object.getGlobalDiagnostics (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\bin\node_modules\typescript\lib\tsc.js:71755:72) at Object.getGlobalDiagnostics (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\bin\node_modules\typescript\lib\tsc.js:73528:86) at buildSingleProject (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\bin\node_modules\typescript\lib\tsc.js:75803:127)

./front/tsconfig.json contents:

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
        "baseUrl": ".",
        "module": "amd",
        "noEmitOnError": true,
        "noImplicitAny": false,
        "out": "./lib/front-bundle.js",
        "paths": {"@shared/*" : ["../shared/*"]},
        "preserveConstEnums": true,
        "removeComments": true,
        "sourceMap": true,
        "target": "es2015",
        "watch": true
    },
    "include": [
        "./src/**/*.ts",
    ],
    "references": [
        {
            "path": "../shared"
        }
    ]
}

./shared/tsconfig.json contents:

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
        "composite": true,
        "declaration": true,
        "module": "amd",
        "noEmitOnError": true,
        "noImplicitAny": false,
        "out": "./lib/shared-bundle.js",
        "preserveConstEnums": true,
        "removeComments": true,
        "sourceMap": true,
        "target": "es2015",
        "watch": true
    },
    "include": [
        "./src/**/*.ts",
    ]
}

Answer 1

Found this when searching for "typescript references has not been built from source file". My mistake was that I was running tsc -p tsconfig.json when I should've been using the --build flag: tsc --build tsconfig.json. If you run with -p TypeScript will not build the referenced projects. Only if you run with --build.