Export type definitions

[SonofNun15]

If I try to bundle a typescript project into a commonjs library for reuse, webpack with ts-loader will spit out beautiful javascript commonjs code for the library, but I have to use tsc in order to generate the declaration files.

Have you considered trying to support export of type definitions next to a bundle via ts-loader?

For reference:
https://github.com/SonofNun15/typescript-library-test/blob/master/README.md

[SonofNun15]

By the way, ts-loader is awesome. I am so happy with webpack and ts-loader right now. This is the closest we have come to finally resolving our TS library issues! Thanks for all of your work! 😄

[jbrantly]

This is related to #45. Basically it probably wouldn't be crazy hard to support --declaration like tsc does where each input file gets an associated declaration file. But where things get hard is with having a single declaration file for a multiple modules. I'm not sure that is in-scope right now. I think it would be best to somehow combine with another tool that already does that or wait until TypeScript gets native support for it.

I'm open to exploring the simple case, but does that actually solve your problem?

Also, thank you for the kind words 😁

[SonofNun15]

I totally understand. Combining multiple external modules into a single file (module) is kind of a hairy problem no matter how you cut it. I agree, let's see how the TS team handles it first. I think this will ultimately only have value if we intended to code split and deploy the library dynamically to the client. At this point we'll probably be bundling it with the client (using webpack / ts-loader), so this won't be an issue.

[SonofNun15]

Resolution was to wait and see what the TypeScript team does with export of type definitions for external modules.

[flyon]

@jbrantly I think supporting --declaration for now would be nice. At least then we can generate single .d.ts files, which with other modules can be combined into one. That would solve my use-case for now at least.

[cspotcode]

I would like this as well. If I can just get access to the .d.ts EmitOutput from within a loader, I can output the .d.ts files myself. Simple loaders and plugins are so easy to write, I don't mind putting a few lines of code together, and you can still wait to implement proper .d.ts bundling.

[jbrantly]

Yup, going to reopen this to track adding individual file .d.ts output so at least other tools can consume them.

[flyon]

Great!