Confused by no-undef errors on type declarations

[searls]

I'm sure this is me doing it wrong, but I'm a bit confused about how to proceed. I'm invoking this plugin with standard.js via:

$ standard --fix --parser typescript-eslint-parser --plugin typescript "**/*.ts"

If my module looks like this:

import Call from '../value/call'
import Double from '../value/double'

export default interface Demonstration {
  call: Call
  double: Double
}

I get all of these errors:

  /Users/justin/code/testdouble/testdouble.js/src/value/demonstration.ts:4:26: 'Demonstration' is not defined.
  /Users/justin/code/testdouble/testdouble.js/src/value/demonstration.ts:5:3: 'call' is not defined.
  /Users/justin/code/testdouble/testdouble.js/src/value/demonstration.ts:6:3: 'double' is not defined.

I would have figured this plugin's job would be to override the eslint no-undef rule, but to be honest I'm just a bit confused by all the moving parts. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[mightyiam]

It's a known bug. As a workaround, just disable this rule. It is not necessary, anyway, because TypeScript guards you from that.

[searls]

Ok, thanks. So I suppose that means there's just no practical way to lint typescript with standard (which isn't configurable)?

[mightyiam]

@searls oh, bro. Maybe try my library? https://github.com/mightyiam/eslint-config-standard-with-typescript/

[searls]

I tried it and couldn't get it to work with the eslint cli before landing on this with the standard bin, actually ¯\(ツ)/¯

[searls]

(I didn't mean to come across as short, I just remember spending an hour trying to get that eslint configuration to work before giving up—if you know of a minimal example app that uses it I'd be willing to try again)

[mightyiam]

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[searls]

Thanks @mightyiam!

[macklinu]

@searls did you find a resolution to your issue?

[searls]

Hi @macklinu I haven't had time to come back to this quite yet but I'm sure that @mightyiam's example projects will get me sorted. Closing

[aboyton]

My issue with disabling this rule and leaving TypeScript to enforce it is that TypeScript makes this a compilation error which is really annoying during development. Is there any way around this?

[mightyiam]

Why exactly is it annoying during development? Does it have to do with an error message in the editor or something more?

[aboyton]

I'm probably missing something obvious but if I set --noUnusedLocals in TypeScript's compiler options then it fails to compile if I have an unused variable which is really annoying when developing as I'm often adding and removing code and thus having unused variables all over the place that I'll clean up before I commit. I'm using Angular-CLI but I'm doubting that's making any difference.

[corbinu]

@aboyton yes I guess we are just confused as to how that is more annoying than it failing to lint. You can always add a no output tsc to your lint script. Also you can add TypeScript checking to your editor just like you can add linting. For example VS Code does this automatically

[aboyton]

So I realise that I'm wading into a discussion with a lot of opinions.

For me my current workflow is:

• Use AngularCLI running in watch mode without --noUnusedLocals.
• Edit in VSCode, constantly making changes and having them reflected in the browser.
• When I'm finished, commit, make a diff with Phabricator (similar to making a pull request with GitHub) which then runs the linter and unit tests on my diff. There's nothing stopping me from making a diff with lint errors, they show up inline which can be useful for WIP code that I want someone to see.
• When everyone is happy we merge the diff into master where CI then builds it and fails if the linting is broken.

This process works reasonable with TSLint's no-unused-variable rule (except that this rule is really buggy and appears to break other rules). I can run code with unused variables which personally I really like. Unfortunately VSCode doesn't allow me to use TSLint's no-unused-variable lint rule as it requires type information and so I don't see unused variables in VSCode (see TSLint's FAQs and https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-tslint/issues/70. So sadly I only see my unused variables when I'm done and I make a Phabricator diff (which then runs TSLint) or I manually TSLint myself.

If I switch on --noUnusedLocals in TypeScript's compiler options then I do get VSCode showing me unused variables which is great, but I can no longer seem to compile my code with AngularCLI as this is an error not a warning. There's been a lot of discussion on microsoft/TypeScript#13408 about making these warnings not compile errors and if it's better to have the compiler or the linter enforcing things like this. Alex Eagle's comments microsoft/TypeScript#13408 (comment) and https://gist.github.com/alexeagle/349887ddb277aa5833643fc8c0b5465b are particularly interesting (to me at least). There's also a discussion about if linting should instead be moved to be part of a language service so you don't have to parse everything with type information twice (see microsoft/TypeScript#13408 (comment) and https://github.com/angelozerr/tslint-language-service).