Move TypeScript to DefinitelyTyped

[vweevers]

Because this is about all Level projects, I'm opening it here.

See Level/abstract-leveldown#204 for background or the TLDR: Level/abstract-leveldown#204 (comment).

@Tapppi, @ralphtheninja and I are in favor. Before we discuss the how, let's give @zixia and @MeirionHughes some time to respond.

[MeirionHughes]

That's fair enough; we could potentially just rollback the defiantly typed commits that removed the abstract-down and level-down typings; and remove the typings entirely from all level repos. the levelup typings on definitely typed are still there, but incorrect.

I've been playing with the new inferring mechanism in typescript 2.8, but unfortunately it falls short due to not supporting function overloads. Ultimately, the way levelup is structured makes it very difficult to type and infer from any arbitrary abstract-down.

In experiencing trying to implement and distribute the typings - I agree it probably makes sense to get it done on definitely typed.

[huan]

I agree we use DefinitelyTyped to manage level typings because it will give the community the maximum flexibility to maintain the types for our Level projects.

We have too much pain with writing a .d.ts separately with the JavaScript code. I always believe that if we could write all in TypeScript, the world would be better from now, and the JavaScript developer could still write ES6 JavaScript code without any problem.

Anyway, any solution would be a wonderful solution as long as it could make typing work. Let's move on. :)

BTW: We can use the discussion board of Github Org Teams for common TypeScript discussion at here: https://github.com/orgs/Level/teams/typescript

[vweevers]

Alright, that's settled then!

It's your call when to remove the typings from Level packages. Seeing as they were experimental, I think we can do so in minor releases across the board (as if they were pre-1.0.0).

[MeirionHughes]

I'll strip out the generics this weekend (reduce the coupling between abstract encoder and levelup) and get some prs going, unless someone beats me to it.

We simply need function overload inference in typescript, until then people will just have to make do with a general typing or make their own interface on-top of levelup.

level, however, can be typed explicitly

[Tapppi]

@zixia

BTW: We can use the discussion board of Github Org Teams for common TypeScript discussion at here: https://github.com/orgs/Level/teams/typescript

As a warning, that chat is private, not public. I think discussions involving changes to users should be public.

We simply need function overload inference in typescript, until then people will just have to make do with a general typing or make their own interface on-top of levelup.

level, however, can be typed explicitly

I think this sounds like a good plan. I guess level-rocksdb etc. also need explicit typings in DT or they won't work?

[huan]

@Tapppi Thanks for the warning, you are right. I thought the discussion is public but it isn't.

[sqwk]

Is there a pull request for DefinitelyTyped already? Which typings should get moved/merged?

[MeirionHughes]

I wasn't really comfortable doing patch work on Defiantly Typed; potentially for me to further break things for people. :/ I think its better to clear up the typings separately, then if you still want to move them it can be all done in one go.

I've made a start anyway, see https://github.com/Level/typings

I've also made a quick branch in down, encoding, up and abstract to add a notypes branch that strips each of their own typings. then level-typings directly depends on them (github dep)

On a side note, it looks like no one else has decided to fix the DT types either; So they're still out-of-date.