🔎 Search Terms

• project references
• tsconfig.json

🕗 Version & Regression Information

• This is the behavior in every version I tried, and I reviewed the FAQ for entries about project references.

⏯ Playground Link

No response

💻 Code

Full reduced test case: https://github.com/OliverJAsh/ts-project-references-nested

Contents inlined below.

tsconfig.json:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "outDir": "./dist/"
  },
  "references": [
    { "path": "./demos/tsconfig.json" },
    { "path": "./app/tsconfig.json" }
  ]
}

app/tsconfig.json:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "composite": true,
    "outDir": "../app-dist/"
  },
  "include": ["**/*"],
  "exclude": ["**/*-demos.*"]
}

app/Component-demos.ts:

// This errors.
import * as helpers from 'demos/helpers';

export const demo = () => {
    helpers;
}

demos/tsconfig.json:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "composite": true,
    "rootDir": "../",
    "outDir": "../demos-dist/",
    "paths": {
      "demos/*": ["./*"]
    }
  },
  "include": [
    "**/*",
    "../app/**/*-demos.*"
  ],
  "references": [{ "path": "../app/tsconfig.json" }]
}

demos/helpers.ts:

export const foo = 1;

🙁 Actual behavior

When I run tsc --build --verbose tsconfig.json, there are no errors, but when I open my editor (VS Code) and open the file app/Component-demos.ts, I see errors:

🙂 Expected behavior

No errors inside my editor.

Additional information about the issue

When app/Component-demos.ts is opened, I believe TypeScript traverses parent file directories searching for a tsconfig.json file, and it stops at the first file it finds which in this case is app/tsconfig.json. This TS project does not include the file app/Component-demos.ts, so I believe TypeScript should continue traversing parent file directories to search for another tsconfig.json that does include the file. In this case, we want TypeScript to discover the root tsconfig.json.