Visual Studio "No Compile" option

[nycdotnet]

Hi,

We've recently developed an enhancement for the grunt-ts plugin that allows targeting a Visual Studio project file for input TS file paths and TS config info rather than having to use src: and the other options. TypeStrong/grunt-ts#215

Grunt-ts along with Task Runner Explorer enables developers to use features not yet supported by the Visual Studio TypeScript project build config UI (such as preserveConstEnums).

One thing about using Task Runner Explorer is that it can only hook into certain Visual Studio events. Among them is "after build" and "before build". After build works great, but it has the odd issue of VS doing its own compilation step of the TypeScript followed by grunt-ts calling tsc. This doesn't seem to be an issue except for performance (the work VS is doing to compile and emit is wasted effort and the developer has to wait longer for the desired result).

I'm wondering what the best way would be for us to turn off only the compile/emit in Visual Studio for TypeScript, but keep everything else the same (language service/syntax highlighting, errors list, C# or VB building, etc). Is this even currently possible? If not, could it be?

Thanks!

[rotemdan]

Hi, just a few days ago I submitted issue #2252 that's somewhat related to this. I need some way to trigger pre- and post-build events when using compile-on-save for a TS project having a single file output (while still maintaining the usual VS "Build" and "Rebuild" commands, language service, debugging etc.). As a workaround I'm currently using Task Runner Explorer with grunt-contrib-watch (launched using a binding of "Solution Open") to watch the compiled file for changes and perform additional actions every time it's modified.

However I don't find that really satisfying (I also need to perform some pre-compilation actions and generally prefer having build steps done either all using Grunt or all with VS) and consider doing exactly what is described: Turn off the VS compilation completely and implement a custom compile-on-save, full builds (that include running unit tests etc.), pre- and post- build events with a combination of grunt-contrib-watch, grunt-ts, additional grunt plugins and Task Runner Explorer.

(update: already implemented that and it works fine - it runs a custom grunt build script every time a .ts file is modified, though currently it doesn't support TRE "Before Build" and "After Build" bindings - for the above mentioned reasons).

It seems that the easiest (and least involved for TS plugin developers) way to efficiently allow these kinds of build scenarios would be to provide an option to turn off any form of compilation initiated by Visual Studio. I would, too, appreciate any ideas on how to do that?

[danquirk]

I don't know if there's a great option for you right now. If you set every .ts file in the project to have Build Action: None in its properties that would probably do what you want but it's pretty onerous to do manually even in medium sized projects.

[mhegazy]

Build is derived by targets in MSBuild projects. If you want to disable the default typescript build, remove the reference to the typescript targets from your file.

This is going to make your language service not collect all files in the project in one context. I would say that is fine, and by next release we should have tsconfig support and then that becomes your new project. If you still want to make it work without using tsconfig, and/or waiting for the next release, define a property <TypeScriptEnabled>true</TypeScriptEnabled> in your project file.

[nycdotnet]

@mhegazy did you mean <TypeScriptEnabled>false</TypeScriptEnabled> ?

[mhegazy]

well depending on what you want :)

if you want to turn off the language service project content loading, make it false,
if you want to enable it, make it true. it is already enabled by including the default targets (Microsoft.TypeScript.targets)

[nycdotnet]

OK I'll mess around with it. Thanks!

[rotemdan]

Thanks @mhegazy, the configuration option seems to work so far! (while still showing syntax/complie errors and allowing debugging in IE) and can even be set for a specific solution configuration (I tried and it seemed to work), like this:

<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'">
...
    <TypeScriptEnabled>false</TypeScriptEnabled>
...
</PropertyGroup>

I'm not exactly sure though what "disabling the language service project content loading" means? (I'm not very familiar with VS concepts like targets, contexts etc). As far as I've tested, everything seems to work normally with this option (apart from the expected behavior of not compiling on build)? And it looks like it will still add <TypeScriptCompile Include=".."/> entries for newly added/created .ts files in the project configuration.

On a side note, now with everything done through Grunt, I somehow have to find a way to deal with collisions between grunt-watch triggered builds and "Before Build"/"After Build" bound events when invoking the VS Build(F6) and Rebuild commands, as VS automatically saves before the build starts, leading to two different Grunt instances needlessly running in parallel.

[nycdotnet]

I was not able to get <TypeScriptEnabled>false</TypeScriptEnabled> to work (VS 2013 Update 4 with TypeScript 1.4), but removing the TypeScript targets file from the project did disable the compilation on project Build.

Here's the complete steps required to disable TypeScript compilation in VS (though still have the language services work, keep refactoring happy, etc.):

• Remove the reference to the TypeScript ".targets" file from the project file.
• Disable "Automatically compile TypeScript files which are not part of a project" in the Visual Studio TypeScript options.

The second step is sort of a bug (or at least the dialog is not labeled in a strictly accurate manner); Even though your TypeScript files are "part" of a project, if you disable the targets file, Visual Studio 2013 will treat them as if they are not part of a project and do compile on save (if the global option is not set). I couldn't get <TypeScriptEnabled/> to do anything.

Thanks @mhegazy - it would be awesome if this could be part of the TypeScript options dialog, but at least it's fairly easy to support via project edit.

[mhegazy]

one tricky thing, is <TypeScriptEnabled>false</TypeScriptEnabled> needs to be at the end of your file specifically after the import to the targets. as the targets define it anyways, and you want to override it.

[nycdotnet]

one tricky thing, is false needs to be at the end of your file specifically after the import to the targets. as the targets define it anyways, and you want to override it.

You're exactly right! This was the trick.

[nycdotnet]

I think this solves the problem. Thanks, @mhegazy .