Error "Cannot write file ... because it would overwrite input file."

[ChrisMBarr]

TypeScript Version: 2.2.1

When using Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 I am getting hundreds of errors in the error list like:

Cannot write file 'C:/{{my-project}}/node_modules/buffer-shims/index.js' because it would overwrite input file.

It looks like this all the time. It doesn't actually prevent building, and everything works just fine, but the error list is distracting and difficult to locate "real" errors when they occur.

My tsconfig.json file

{
  "compileOnSave": true,
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": ".",
    "module": "commonjs",
    "noImplicitAny": true,
    "removeComments": true,
    "sourceMap": true,
    "target": "ES5",
    "forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true,
    "strictNullChecks": true,
    "allowUnreachableCode": false,
    "allowUnusedLabels": false,
    "noFallthroughCasesInSwitch": true,
    "noImplicitReturns": true,
    "noImplicitThis": true,
    "noUnusedLocals": true,
    "noUnusedParameters": true,
    
    "typeRoots": [],
    "types": [] //Explicitly specify an empty array so that the TS2 @types modules are not acquired since we aren't ready for them yet.
  },
  "exclude": ["node_modules"]
}

How can I get rid of all these errors?

(I've also posted this question on StackOverflow with no responses yet)

[leovo2708]

I also get same problem.

[mhegazy]

is --allowjs set? can you share the project?

[ChrisMBarr]

Sorry, I cannot share the project, and no that flag is not set. My tsconfig.json is above, and we just use that with VS2015 Update 3, which just triggers the build with MSBuild normally.

I have teammates complaining about the same issue happening to them on the same projects. I also work on a project at home on a different computer that has the exact same issue & the same setup (TS 2.2.1, VS2015 U3, etc.)

[mhegazy]

do you see the same behavior if you create a bare-bones project with the same configurations?

[Hotell]

We have the same problem wc-catalogue/blaze-elements#299 although with type definitions write access

[mhegazy]

@Hotell do you see this without "awesome-typescript-loader"? can you share repro steps with me?

[Hotell]

yup, as you can see in the issue the output is from running raw tsc second time.

just clone the repo https://github.com/wc-catalogue/blaze-elements

• hit yarn from root
• hit yarn tsc -> first time compilation ( everything's ok ) => first time definitions/ folder generated
• hit yarn tsc again -> errors

[BrainSlugs83]

We're having a similar issue -- same version of typescript (2.2.1) and Visual Studio 2015 (Update 3); the first time the build runs, there are zero errors, but after that we get hundreds of these errors.

It appears that all of the errors (for us) are in the "node_modules" folder, which we have set to exclude in our tsconfig.json file. -- From looking at similar bugs, it seems like the excludes aren't treated the same in this version of typescript?

Our tsconfig.json file:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "noImplicitAny": false,
    "noEmitOnError": true,
    "removeComments": false,
    "sourceMap": true,
    "target": "es5",
    "module": "commonjs",
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "emitDecoratorMetadata": true,
    "experimentalDecorators": true
  },
  "exclude": [
    "node_modules",
    "wwwroot",
    "aot",
    "AngularApp/main-aot.ts"

  ],
  "compileOnSave": true
}

Some of the errors we get (they're all the same, but different files):

Severity	Code	Description	Project	File	Line	Suppression State
Error	TS5055	Cannot write file 'C:/XYZ/Project.AppWeb/node_modules/zone.js/dist/zone.js' because it would overwrite input file.	TypeScript Virtual Projects		1	Active
Error	TS5055	Cannot write file 'C:/XYZ/Project.AppWeb/node_modules/events/events.js' because it would overwrite input file.	TypeScript Virtual Projects		1	Active
Error	TS5055	Cannot write file 'C:/XYZ/Project.AppWeb/node_modules/core-js/modules/_wks.js' because it would overwrite input file.	TypeScript Virtual Projects		1	Active
Error	TS5055	Cannot write file 'C:/XYZ/Project.AppWeb/node_modules/core-js/modules/_uid.js' because it would overwrite input file.	TypeScript Virtual Projects		1	Active
Error	TS5055	Cannot write file 'C:/XYZ/Project.AppWeb/node_modules/core-js/modules/_to-primitive.js' because it would overwrite input file.	TypeScript Virtual Projects		1	Active

Again, if we delete the "node_modules" folder the build will work once, but then once it's been recreated, it will fail on the next rebuild.

[mhegazy]

@Hotell i am not seeing this locally, what am i missing?

c:\test\14538\blaze-elements>yarn tsc
yarn tsc v0.18.1
$ "c:\test\14538\blaze-elements\node_modules\.bin\tsc"
Done in 5.46s.

c:\test\14538\blaze-elements>yarn tsc
yarn tsc v0.18.1
$ "c:\test\14538\blaze-elements\node_modules\.bin\tsc"
Done in 5.87s.

c:\test\14538\blaze-elements>dir /B definitions
packages
polyfills.d.ts
styles.d.ts
test-helpers.d.ts
vendors.d.ts

c:\test\14538\blaze-elements>yarn tsc
yarn tsc v0.18.1
$ "c:\test\14538\blaze-elements\node_modules\.bin\tsc"
Done in 4.48s.

[mhegazy]

@BrainSlugs83 if you have a repro project i would love to take a look.

[max-favilli]

I am also facing the same problem, these are the errors:

And this is my tsconfig.json:

Since I am not using typescript at all I just created tsconfig to skip build, I also had to choose target=ES6 otherwise I was having other errors.

[mhegazy]

is the tsconfig.json part of your project? and can you confirm the content type is "Content"? if so, can you share your project?

[max-favilli]

@mhegazy Hi, yes I can confirm tsconfig.json is included in the project:

But I am sorry I don't know what "content type" are you referring to, can you please clarify?

I can't share the project.

[ChrisMBarr]

On my project, I can also confirm that the tsconfig file is included in the project file, and it is listed as content.

[kevindqc]

@max-favilli I think @mhegazy means the "Build Action" when talking about "content type".

Select tsconfig.json in the solution explorer. Bring up the Properties window (F4 key by default). There will be a Build Action property.

[max-favilli]

Thanks @kevindqc , @mhegazy yes "Build Action" is set to "content"

[mhegazy]

Can you share your virtual project structure with me, to get that you need to:

• go to Tools > Options > Text Editor > TypeScript > Project, and check Display Virtual Projects when no Solution is loaded;
• restart VS, and open a file in your project
• you should now see a new node in your Solution Explorer under the name of TypeScript Virtual Project

[max-favilli]

@mhegazy like this?

Thanks for helping.

[kevindqc]

I have the same problem. I can't share the project either, but I will try to provide as much information as possible.

I have typescript compilation disabled in the .csproj (<TypeScriptCompileBlocked>true</TypeScriptCompileBlocked>)
Instead it is compiled by npm run build:prod, which is in a build event.

The errors are not always there. I have been trying to make them appear (there were shown in VS, so I restarted VS). I've tried building the typescript project, building the solution, running tests, running code analysis, running code coverage, etc. Nothing triggers it. Then, just as I was writing the last sentence, the errors appeared. So it seems to be some background tasks that does it? It seems to happen around 2 minutes after I started a build (at least the 2-3 times I tried it out)

Timeline:
1:37:20 - Opened Visual Studio
1:37:30 - Started solution build
1:38:20 - Build finished
1:39:39 - Errors appeared

I noticed my project was still using the v2.0.3 Microsoft.TypeScript.Compiler and Microsoft.TypeScript.MSBuild nuget packages. I updated them to v2.2.1. So far, no error. Will update if I see the errors again. (Edit: I see the errors again, altough it took a bit longer, ~5 minutes, without me doing anything but building when I opened VS. Actually, I don't even need to build anything to get the error - just opening the project and waiting a few minutes shows the errors)

About those outdated nuget packages, is that normal? I think I got a popup to upgrade my project typescript tools when I installed the new version of typescript, but it seems it only updated <TypeScriptToolsVersion>2.2</TypeScriptToolsVersion>. Should it not also update the nuget packages?

[johnlee]

I just updated to Typescript 2.2.1 and having this same issue. Its flagging all the the node_modules but the tsc compiler completes without a problem.

[Hotell]

@mhegazy

@Hotell i am not seeing this locally, what am i missing?

right, it was fixed by wc-catalogue/blaze-elements@cdb94bf

sry for delayed answer and thx 4 help!

[max-favilli]

@Hotell @mhegazy Doesn't seems to work for me.
Maybe it works if you have d.ts files in a "definitions" folder?
But I don't have that. I have @types under "node_modules" which should be inheritedly excluded?

[johnlee]

@ChrisMBarr May I ask if you got this resolved yet? I've been following the thread and even did the fix suggested by @Hotell couple of posts up but I'm still getting these Errors in Visual Studios. They all seem to be coming from the node_modules folder.

[billti]

Would you be able to enable detailed logging and send us the results? Set the system environment variable TSS_LOG to a value such as -file C:/temp/logs/tsserver.log -level verbose (make sure the logs folder exists). Then after you repro the problem, send/attach the log for analysis. (Note: It may contain data such as file paths and completion lists, so be sure there isn't any data you don't want to share in it).

In my testing I've occasionally seen the project system construct a view of the project that contains the wrong files, causing intermittent errors at unpredictable times. I'd like to see if that may be the cause here.

I can provide my email address if you'd rather send the files direct than upload them (billti at microsoft dot com). Thanks.

[ChrisMBarr]

@johnlee no, still the same in VS2015. However, I've since started to use Visual Studio 2017 and I have no errors in there!

[max-favilli]

@billti Variable added, visual studio (2017) restarted, solution rebuilded, but the log file is not being created. What should I check?

[billti]

Is it definitely a system environment variable (i.e. if you open a new command prompt and run SET TSS is the setting listed)? If not that, is the folder the log is to be written to already present (the logger won't create directories that don't exist). Other than that, its also safer to use forward slashes rather than backslashes in the path.

[baktun14]

:(

[matthew-dean]

@Abadii So.... it appears that the reason this was happening was that, even though the JS files were not included, they were failing because they were CommonJS modules.... 🤔 ....

In other words, once everything had proper imports / exports, I stopped getting this issue. So, based on the comments of this thread, and the sheer number of fixes, I think that this is one of those red herring errors. As in, when there's X type of JS / Intellisense / compiling issue, then VSCode throws this Cannot write file error. But, in my case, this was resolved with a solution OTHER than every other of the numerous solutions offered in this thread. 🤷‍♂️ And again, it threw this error on a file that did not exist and would not be replaced. So maybe errors are caching, and an unknown error throws a cached error? Something like that? I think someone needs to inspect the code around this particular error.

[leilapearson]

Commenting here because it is the first thing that came up in my google search.

I ran into this issue too. It seems like some part of the compilation process isn't recognizing that it is inside an excluded directory.

I don't don't see the problem if I do this:

  "exclude": ["**/*.d.ts", "dist", "node_modules"]

I do see the problem if I do this:

  "exclude": ["dist/**/*.d.ts", "dist", "node_modules"]

or this:

  "exclude": ["**/dist/**/*.d.ts", "dist", "node_modules"]

The error occurs despite the fact that the files it is complaining about are clearly inside dist:

error TS5055: Cannot write file '/Users/leila/dev/wip/jest-fp-ts/dist/index.d.ts' because it would overwrite input file.
error TS5055: Cannot write file '/Users/leila/dev/wip/jest-fp-ts/dist/matchers/index.d.ts' because it would overwrite input file.

In my case I have imports set up where src/index.ts imports and re-exports from src/matchers/index.ts which in turn imports and re-exports from src/matchers/eitherMatchers/index.ts.

The first two files are the ones causing the compilation errors. The third file is fine. So it looks like it might be related to how the import / export tree is affecting compilation.

[jasonk]

I just stumbled across this issue while having the same problem, and thought I'd add what mine turned out to be in case other people stumble across it the same way.

In my case, I have a monorepo with a separate tsconfig file for each package, that all extend from a base tsconfig. Each packages config has references entries that point to the path of the packages it depends on. I also have a tsconfig.json in the root of the repo that includes files: [] and has references to all of the package directories. This way I can run tsc -b --watch from the root and have it rebuild on changes throughout the entire project.

This worked fine for quite a while, then abruptly started throwing this error even though none of the configs had changed.

I finally tracked it down by attempting to build the one package that was being reported in the error by itself, rather than building the whole project.

Turns out the problem was that I had attempted to have the project import itself. The package name was @my-project/utils, and it worked fine until I moved some code from another package into a file in the utils package. That code included import stuff from '@my-project/utils'; and that was what caused the error. By changing to to import stuff from '.'; instead the error went away..

[Ghirigoro]

@jasonk This probably is just revealing my ignorance but wouldn't that only work if your monorepo is being bundled together by something that will resolve all those imports (e.g. webpack)? If your monorepo is composed of modules that can be published and used independently changing to relative imports would cause errors no?

[jasonk]

@Ghirigoro No, the problem wasn't that I was using a package path, it's that it was using a package path to import a package from within itself. Even without Typescript, that won't work.

Basically what I had done was the equivalent of this:

$ mkdir problem
$ cd problem
$ npm init -y
$ echo 'console.log( "WORKED!" );' > index.js
$ echo 'require( "problem" );' > test.js

If you then try to run that with node:

$ node ./test.js
internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:985
  throw err;
  ^

Error: Cannot find module '/Users/jasonk/problem/test.js'
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:982:15)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:864:27)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (internal/modules/run_main.js:74:12)
    at internal/main/run_main_module.js:18:47 {
  code: 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND',
  requireStack: []
}

If you replace the package name then it works correctly:

$ echo 'require( "." );' > test.js
$ node ./test.js
WORKED!

I suspect that what happened was that when the build was run, all of the other packages that were importing from @my-project/utils had that import resolved to packages/utils (because they had the correct entries in the references array in tsconfig), so they built normally. But because that package wasn't supposed to be importing itself that import got resolved to node_modules/@my-project/utils, which was a symlink to packages/utils, but TypeScript didn't detect that they were actually the same project so it tried to build it twice, but since both builds had the same output directory I ended up with this error.

[edcu11]

This happens when the declaration files are not excluded from the build. Whenever this occurs, the builder tries to build the existing ".d.ts" files and replace them with the same filename. So that's why you will get the error: Cannot write file ... because it would overwrite input file.

To prevent this, you can exclude your "outDir":"build" in jour tsconfig.json file:

"exclude": [
    "build",
    ....
]

or if you don't have outDir defined exclude all d.ts. extension files:

"exclude": [
    "**/*.d.ts"
    .....
]

Hope this helps

Excluding my build dir solved the issue for me

[ildar-dev]

Most likely, this happens when you try to run one project with two nodes.
For this hypothesis, you can test the count of processes on your computer named "node" after run build.
What I did to solve the problem:
Step 1.
Compare
node -v
and
nvm -ls, the version in use.
In terminal set current node version:
nvm use {neededVersion}
In principle, delete unnecessary versions of the node in nvm (this will help your IDE to automatically determine the normal version of the node).
Step 2.
Determine the current node in your IDE. i.e. in WebStorm:
Preferencies->Languages & Frameworks -> Node.js and NPM: Node interpreter - set needed version.
(In addition, you can check the version of the node for each item everywhere (Typescript))

Also, this problem can occur if the npm packages or git submodules used their own node inside

[munishusa]

I was facing this issue for Webdriver IO / WDIO project. It got resolved when I removed the "wdio.config.js" from "include" in tsconfig.json.

[aakilfernandes]

Fixed this by adding "types": "./{name of dist directory}/**/**.d.ts" to my package.json file

[christian-bromann]

I am dealing with the same issue and the problem is only happening if I have:

"types": "./build/index.d.ts"

in my package.json. Anyone has a clue why that is?

[Arkanic]

If tsc runs fine the first time then errors with this error every time after that it's because it doesn't want to overwrite the compiled files. Just delete the folder then run tsc again, and it'll be fine.

[lazyd3v]

Is there any way to overwrite the compiled files? Pass some special option in tsconfig maybe? Adding this in package.json

"prebuild": "rm -rf ./dist"

looks hacky in my opinion

[Ghirigoro]

@Arkanic Deleting the folder is a reasonable workaround, but it has downsides. For example if you have an incremental build, or there's other expensive steps required to prepare the build folder. It seems like the problem here is that TS doesn't listen to you when you tell it to exclude something.

[Limule]

Same problem, I solve It by doing this :

Add in package.json
"files": [ "dist/**/*" // Your build repos ]

and add in tsconfig.json

"include": [ "src", "index.ts", // put your files here ],

[Sajjon]

Using a mono repo? Check for (implicit and unwanted/accidental) cyclic dependencies! That was what caused this issue for me. I wrote an answer here on StackOverlflow

[mkermani144]

If you want to test another solution and check if it works, here is mine:

Check if these conditions are met for your project:

1. You have allowJs: true and declaration: true in your tsconfig
2. You have set package.json main file to the compiled js file (e.g. main: './dist/index.js')
3. You have imported your root index.ts using relative imports (e.g. import something from '../..') somewhere in your project

Then try changing from

import something from '../..' // Or any other relative import

to

import something from '../../index' // No .ts needed

Hope it helps.

[fider-apptimia]

3. You have imported your root `index.ts` using relative imports (e.g. `import something from '../..'`) somewhere in your project

Then try changing from

import something from '../..' // Or any other relative import

to

import something from '../../index' // No .ts needed

Hope it helps.

@mkermani144 thanks!

[mati-o]

Just had the same issue for d.ts files. While everything was set correctly in terms of tsconfig dirs, I had this error because by accident my source code imported from the dist dir rather than src, so it was kinda circular I guess. Changing the import fixed this.

Hope someone will find this comment useful.

[craigphicks]

@mati-o - "because by accident my source code imported from the dist dir rather than src"

To be exact, the auto completion took over at

import { xxx } from

and incorrectly completed to

import { xxx } from '../dist/src'

or something like that. I think that is a bug.

[chrisdev3001]

If you want to test another solution and check if it works, here is mine:

Check if these conditions are met for your project:

1. You have allowJs: true and declaration: true in your tsconfig
2. You have set package.json main file to the compiled js file (e.g. main: './dist/index.js')
3. You have imported your root index.ts using relative imports (e.g. import something from '../..') somewhere in your project

Then try changing from

import something from '../..' // Or any other relative import

to

import something from '../../index' // No .ts needed

Hope it helps.

I've spent a 2 hours looking for configs solutions, and this post save my day, thanks man!