Fork TS Checker Webpack Plugin

Webpack plugin that runs TypeScript type checker on a separate process.

Features

Speeds up TypeScript type checking (by moving it to a separate process) 🏎
Supports modern TypeScript features like project references and incremental mode ✨
Displays nice error messages with the code frame formatter 🌈

Installation

This plugin requires Node.js >=14.0.0+, Webpack ^5.11.0, TypeScript ^3.6.0

If you depend on TypeScript 2.1 - 2.6.2, please use version 4 of the plugin.
If you depend on Webpack 4, TypeScript 2.7 - 3.5.3 or ESLint feature, please use version 6 of the plugin.
If you depend on Node.js 12, please use version 8 of the plugin.
If you need Vue.js support, please use version 6 of ths plugin

# with npm
npm install --save-dev fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin

# with yarn
yarn add --dev fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin

# with pnpm
pnpm add -D fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin

The minimal webpack config (with ts-loader)

// webpack.config.js
const ForkTsCheckerWebpackPlugin = require('fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin');

module.exports = {
  context: __dirname, // to automatically find tsconfig.json
  entry: './src/index.ts',
  resolve: {
    extensions: [".ts", ".tsx", ".js"],
  },
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.tsx?$/,
        loader: 'ts-loader',
        // add transpileOnly option if you use ts-loader < 9.3.0 
        // options: {
        //   transpileOnly: true
        // }
      }
    ]
  },
  plugins: [new ForkTsCheckerWebpackPlugin()],
  watchOptions: {
    // for some systems, watching many files can result in a lot of CPU or memory usage
    // https://webpack.js.org/configuration/watch/#watchoptionsignored
    // don't use this pattern, if you have a monorepo with linked packages
    ignored: /node_modules/,
  },
};

Examples how to configure it with babel-loader, ts-loader and Visual Studio Code are in the examples directory.

Modules resolution

It's very important to be aware that this plugin uses TypeScript's, not webpack's modules resolution. It means that you have to setup tsconfig.json correctly.

It's because of the performance - with TypeScript's module resolution we don't have to wait for webpack to compile files.

To debug TypeScript's modules resolution, you can use tsc --traceResolution command.

Options

This plugin uses cosmiconfig. This means that besides the plugin constructor, you can place your configuration in the:

"fork-ts-checker" field in the package.json
.fork-ts-checkerrc file in JSON or YAML format
fork-ts-checker.config.js file exporting a JS object

Options passed to the plugin constructor will overwrite options from the cosmiconfig (using deepmerge).

Name	Type	Default value	Description
`async`	`boolean`	`compiler.options.mode === 'development'`	If `true`, reports issues after webpack's compilation is done. Thanks to that it doesn't block the compilation. Used only in the `watch` mode.
`typescript`	`object`	`{}`	See TypeScript options.
`issue`	`object`	`{}`	See Issues options.
`formatter`	`string` or `object` or `function`	`codeframe`	Available formatters are `basic`, `codeframe` and a custom `function`. To configure `codeframe` formatter, pass: `{ type: 'codeframe', options: { <coderame options> } }`. To use absolute file path, pass: `{ type: 'codeframe', pathType: 'absolute' }`.
`logger`	`{ log: function, error: function }` or `webpack-infrastructure`	`console`	Console-like object to print issues in `async` mode.
`devServer`	`boolean`	`true`	If set to `false`, errors will not be reported to Webpack Dev Server.

TypeScript options

Options for the TypeScript checker (typescript option object).

Name	Type	Default value	Description
`memoryLimit`	`number`	`2048`	Memory limit for the checker process in MB. If the process exits with the allocation failed error, try to increase this number.
`configFile`	`string`	`'tsconfig.json'`	Path to the `tsconfig.json` file (path relative to the `compiler.options.context` or absolute path)
`configOverwrite`	`object`	`{ compilerOptions: { skipLibCheck: true, sourceMap: false, inlineSourceMap: false, declarationMap: false } }`	This configuration will overwrite configuration from the `tsconfig.json` file. Supported fields are: `extends`, `compilerOptions`, `include`, `exclude`, `files`, and `references`.
`context`	`string`	`dirname(configuration.configFile)`	The base path for finding files specified in the `tsconfig.json`. Same as the `context` option from the ts-loader. Useful if you want to keep your `tsconfig.json` in an external package. Keep in mind that not having a `tsconfig.json` in your project root can cause different behaviour between `fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin` and `tsc`. When using editors like `VS Code` it is advised to add a `tsconfig.json` file to the root of the project and extend the config file referenced in option `configFile`.
`build`	`boolean`	`false`	The equivalent of the `--build` flag for the `tsc` command.
`mode`	`'readonly'` or `'write-dts'` or `'write-tsbuildinfo'` or `'write-references'`	`build === true ? 'write-tsbuildinfo' ? 'readonly'`	Use `readonly` if you don't want to write anything on the disk, `write-dts` to write only `.d.ts` files, `write-tsbuildinfo` to write only `.tsbuildinfo` files, `write-references` to write both `.js` and `.d.ts` files of project references (last 2 modes requires `build: true`).
`diagnosticOptions`	`object`	`{ syntactic: false, semantic: true, declaration: false, global: false }`	Settings to select which diagnostics do we want to perform.
`profile`	`boolean`	`false`	Measures and prints timings related to the TypeScript performance.
`typescriptPath`	`string`	`require.resolve('typescript')`	If supplied this is a custom path where TypeScript can be found.

Issues options

Options for the issues filtering (issue option object). I could write some plain text explanation of these options but I think code will explain it better:

interface Issue {
  severity: 'error' | 'warning';
  code: string;
  file?: string;
}

type IssueMatch = Partial<Issue>; // file field supports glob matching
type IssuePredicate = (issue: Issue) => boolean;
type IssueFilter = IssueMatch | IssuePredicate | (IssueMatch | IssuePredicate)[];

Name	Type	Default value	Description
`include`	`IssueFilter`	`undefined`	If `object`, defines issue properties that should be matched. If `function`, acts as a predicate where `issue` is an argument.
`exclude`	`IssueFilter`	`undefined`	Same as `include` but issues that match this predicate will be excluded.

Expand example

Include issues from the src directory, exclude issues from .spec.ts files:

module.exports = {
  // ...the webpack configuration
  plugins: [
    new ForkTsCheckerWebpackPlugin({
      issue: {
        include: [
          { file: '**/src/**/*' }
        ],
        exclude: [
          { file: '**/*.spec.ts' }
        ]
      }
    })
  ]
};

Plugin hooks

This plugin provides some custom webpack hooks:

Hook key	Type	Params	Description
`start`	`AsyncSeriesWaterfallHook`	`change, compilation`	Starts issues checking for a compilation. It's an async waterfall hook, so you can modify the list of changed and removed files or delay the start of the service.
`waiting`	`SyncHook`	`compilation`	Waiting for the issues checking.
`canceled`	`SyncHook`	`compilation`	Issues checking for the compilation has been canceled.
`error`	`SyncHook`	`compilation`	An error occurred during issues checking.
`issues`	`SyncWaterfallHook`	`issues, compilation`	Issues have been received and will be reported. It's a waterfall hook, so you can modify the list of received issues.

To access plugin hooks and tap into the event, we need to use the getCompilerHooks static method. When we call this method with a webpack compiler instance, it returns the object with tapable hooks where you can pass in your callbacks.

// ./src/webpack/MyWebpackPlugin.js
const ForkTsCheckerWebpackPlugin = require('fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin');

class MyWebpackPlugin {
  apply(compiler) {
    const hooks = ForkTsCheckerWebpackPlugin.getCompilerHooks(compiler);

    // log some message on waiting
    hooks.waiting.tap('MyPlugin', () => {
      console.log('waiting for issues');
    });
    // don't show warnings
    hooks.issues.tap('MyPlugin', (issues) =>
      issues.filter((issue) => issue.severity === 'error')
    );
  }
}

module.exports = MyWebpackPlugin;

// webpack.config.js
const ForkTsCheckerWebpackPlugin = require('fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin');
const MyWebpackPlugin = require('./src/webpack/MyWebpackPlugin');

module.exports = {
  /* ... */
  plugins: [
    new ForkTsCheckerWebpackPlugin(),
    new MyWebpackPlugin()
  ]
};

Profiling types resolution

When using TypeScript 4.3.0 or newer you can profile long type checks by setting "generateTrace" compiler option. This is an instruction from microsoft/TypeScript#40063:

Set "generateTrace": "{folderName}" in your tsconfig.json (under compilerOptions)
Look in the resulting folder. If you used build mode, there will be a legend.json telling you what went where. Otherwise, there will be trace.json file and types.json files.
Navigate to edge://tracing or chrome://tracing and load trace.json
Expand Process 1 with the little triangle in the left sidebar
Click on different blocks to see their payloads in the bottom pane
Open types.json in an editor
When you see a type ID in the tracing output, go-to-line {id} to find data about that type

Enabling incremental mode

You must both set "incremental": true in your tsconfig.json (under compilerOptions) and also specify mode: 'write-references' in ForkTsCheckerWebpackPlugin settings.

Related projects

ts-loader - TypeScript loader for webpack.
babel-loader - Alternative TypeScript loader for webpack.
fork-ts-checker-notifier-webpack-plugin - Notifies about build status using system notifications (similar to the webpack-notifier).

Credits

This plugin was created in Realytics in 2017. Thank you for supporting Open Source.

License

MIT License

keepitsimple/fork-ts-checker-webpack-plugin