Add --listExplicitAny or --warnExplicitAny

[unional]

Agree with @aluanhaddad in his comment about the backfire effect of --noImplicitAny
#11839 (comment)

It would be nice to add --listExplicitAny or --warnExplicitAny flag to catch those unfortunate circumstances.

Doing a text search for : any may work, but I worry that there may be some case this simple text search is not sufficient.
Since the compiler has all the information needed, it may be better to let the compiler helping out here.

[DanielRosenwasser]

Would find-all-references on built-in types be sufficient?

[unional]

Do you mean it is available (or to be made available) in the compiler API or as a flag?

Will find-all-references differentiate between implicit any and explicit any?
^ will probably do not matter because the context of this discussion is to enable --noImplicitAny, thus all any are explicit.

It is probably a better route as it is more generic. 🌷

[DanielRosenwasser]

It doesn't exist now, but I'd like it to.

Find all references would find explicit annotations and uses of any.

[unional]

Feel free to change the title to reflect find-all-reference 🌷

[aluanhaddad]

@unional thanks taking up the cause ❤️!

Being able to find all references on any would be great, so I'm all for that, but it would be really nice to have a --warnExplicitAny flag as you suggest in your opening post.
This could raise an error, or offer a codefix, whenever an explicit any adorns a declaration that would not otherwise be an implicit any.

[NN---]

You can use TSLint https://palantir.github.io/tslint/rules/no-any/

[unional]

@NN--- tslint does not allow you to just pass in a rule in the command line.
The purpose of this is to just run a check to see if there are any not appropriated any usage in the code.

In regular development, you would like to have this turned off so it won't distract the developers.

[mhegazy]

What about never should we have a flag for it too? what about void in argument position? or undefined in function return positions? what about JSON.parse would it be marked as an error as well? what would be and what would not be..

I do not think we would add a flag like such, this seems to fall in the realm of style/lint tools.

I do support enabling find all references for any (and other primitive types), we disallow them today to avoid noise, but seems artificial.

[mhegazy]

Filed #13473 to track find all refs.

[unional]

Close this as #13566 landed? How to use it?

[mhegazy]

#13566 is in, but there is still a bug #13846. should be fixed for 2.2.1