Typescript: Resolve project references from root

[WearyMonkey]

Search Terms

Project reference root resolve.

Suggestion

Resolve project reference paths from root directory of a mono repository.

Use Cases

We have a large mono-repository with 1000s of sub-packages we want to convert to TS projects. Currently the references between them must be defined as relative paths, leading to configuration like:

  "references": [
    {
      "path": "../../../base"
    },
    {
      "path": "../colors"
    },
    {
      "path": "../device_capabilities"
    }
  ],

Which is:

• Hard to read and reason about
• Creates noisy diffs when moving packages

Ideally project references could be resolved from the root of the mono-repo project, e.g. rootDir or baseUrl options.

E.g.:

  "references": [
    {
      "path": "base"
    },
    {
      "path": "ui/base/colors"
    },
    {
      "path": "ui/base/device_capabilities"
    }
  ],

Checklist

My suggestion meets these guidelines:

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

[poseidonCore]

To be consistent with current standards for relative to root, would it be better to prefix these references with "/"?:

...
 "references": [
    {
      "path": "/base"
    },
    {
      "path": "/ui/base/colors"
    },
    {
      "path": "/ui/base/device_capabilities"
    }
  ],
...

https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/module-resolution.html