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0 pointsspankalee1y ago0 comments

Hey Daniel.

I write a lot of tools that depend on the TypeScript compiler API, and they run in a lot of a lot of JS environments including Node and the browser. The current CJS codebase is even a little tricky to load into standard JS module supporting environments like browsers, so I've been _really_ looking forward to what Jake and others have said will be an upcoming standard modules based version.

Is that still happening, and how will the native compiler be distributed for us tools authors? I presume WASM? Will the compiler API be compatible? Transforms, the AST, LanguageService, Program, SourceFile, Checker, etc.?

I'm quite concerned that the migration path for tools could be extremely difficult.

[edit] To add to this as I think about it: I maintain libraries that build on top of the TS API, and are then in turn used by other libraries that still access the TS APIs. Things like framework static analysis, then used by various linters, compilers, etc. Some linters are integrated with eslint via typescript-eslint. So the dependency chain is somewhat deep and wide.

Is the path forward going to be that just the TS compiler has a JS interop layer and the rest stays the same, or are all TS ecosystem tools going to have to port to Go to run well?

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ciarcode1y ago

I think they answered in their FAQ here: https://github.com/microsoft/typescript-go/discussions/455#d....

If I got it correctly, they created a node native module that allows synchronous communication on standard I/O between external processes.

So, this node module will make possible the communication between the typescript compiler GO process, that will expose an “API server compiler”, and a client side JavaScript process.

They don’t think it will be possible to port all APIs and some/most of them will be different than today.

spankaleeOP1y ago

I really wonder how tough that is going to be to migrate to.

I have API use that falls into a few categories, that aren' just LSP-ish type cases:

- Transforms, which presumably there has to be some solution for, even if it's porting to Go.

- Linters, which integrate with typescript-eslint and need the type-checker.

- Codemods, which create and modify AST nodes and re-emit them.

- Static analyzers, which build us app-specific models of the code and rely on AST traversal and the type-checker.

- Analyzer libraries that offer tools to other libraries and apps that expose the TypeScript AST and functions that operate on AST nodes.

Traversing the AST over IPC is going to be too chatty, so I presume there will have to be some sort of way to get a whole SourceFile in one call, but then I wonder about traversal. You'll need a visitor library on your side of the IPC at least, but that's simple. But then you also need all the predicates. You don't want to be calling ts.isTemplateExpression() on every node via IPC.

And I do all this stuff in web workers too, so whatever this IPC is has to work there.

ciarcode1y ago

In the post, they specifically talk about two points that seems to address some of your doubts

1. “We expect to have a more curated API that is informed by critical use-cases (e.g. linting, transforms, resolution behavior, language service embedding, etc.).”

2. “We also can imagine opportunities to optimize, use other underlying IPC strategies, and provide batch-style APIs to minimize call overhead.”

Anyway, I’ve used the compiler API a lot too, and I really enjoy its huge capabilities, making possible practically everything on the source code (EDIT: and hijack the build process too). I hope we won’t miss too much.

lytedev1y ago

Reading the article, it looks like they are writing go, so will probably be distributing go binaries.

maxloh1y ago

Maybe they'll also be distributed in WASM too, which is easier to be integrated with JavaScript codebases.

psd11y ago

Do a n00b a favour... would you ever run wasm outside of a client browser? Are you suggesting that wasm is a viable platform for local services or commands?

Or do you mean that there's a use case for a compilation in the browser?

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nine_k1y ago

Would running WASM be any faster than running JS in V8?

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