Make setting up a tuned TypeScript project easy as 🥧

[JacksonKearl]

Currently it takes quite a bit of product knowledge to set up a TypeScript project and get all the nice features VS Code has to offer. Examples:

• What should my tsconfig.json include?
• How can I run my project?
• How can I get debugging to work?
• How should I run my build/watch?
• How can I set up tests?
• How should I lint/format the code?

And probably lots more...

This issue tracks making these questions easy to answer, the starting point for this will be developing start list contributions to instantiate template folders that have been tuned to make the development/build/test/debug process as seamless as possible.

[JacksonKearl]

cc @gcrev93, @DanielRosenwasser

[connor4312]

Something that would remove one toekick for generic TS setup (mainly in the 'debugging' step) would be if the compiler would create sourcemaps by default. I'm sure there's reasoning behind why it's not the case, but I couldn't find it and I think sourcemaps are desired in vastly more cases nowadays than they're undesired.

[digitarald]

Adding to the list of ideas:

• Detecting/installing Node/NPM & typescript package
• TS Playground

[gcrev93]

Just chiming in:

I think we can help with the tsconfig question by using the basic tsconfig created when you run tsc --init ! Its well commented and gives explanation on each option in the file

It would also be great for Compile and Running your projects to potientially be as easy as a button click.

I do agree node packages being detected/installed as well.

[gcrev93]

As a starting solution, we discussed a simple solution:

Having a welcome page for TypeScript that has the following steps:

1. Tells users how to download TS
2. Has a button that allows users to create a simple TS solution . (This will use tsc --init to create a base tsconfig and then
3. Shows users how to compile their code with tsc

I think our simple solution can also assist here #124280 . it is mentioned that the having a base tsconfig can speed up the run/debug

I would love to hear your thoughts @JacksonKearl @DanielRosenwasser @digitarald

Also going to mention @connor4312 since its his comment I am referring to

[DanielRosenwasser]

I think making sure that a user has Node.js installed is a good one to note too.

[yume-chan]

How about editing tsconfig.json with the built-in settings editor #104044?