yatag

Yet Another Tag Annotations Generator

yatag is a tool for generating TypeScript index.d.ts from jsdoc-compatible type annotations.

I created it to generate the index.d.ts of the project node-gdal-async which is a native Node.js addon with both JS and C++ code. Since then, I have used it for most of my JS projects. It is still not fully standards-compliant, but it should be usable as is.

As opposed to the now built-in capability of the Typescript compiler, yatag solves a very simple problem in a very simple manner.

yatag is completely language-agnostic as it doesn't parse the language at all - it parses only the jsdoc-compatible type annotations blocks.

Why another type generator?

• Because ever since my childhood I always wanted to create at least one software package with a name starting with 'yet another'
• Because the automatic index.d.ts generation introduced by TypeScript in 3.7 is still badly broken and even if it is constantly improving, there are stil show-stopping bugs in 4.2 - which given its overly complex approach to an otherwise very simple problem is absolutely understandable
• Because even if the TypeScript automatic generation one day eventually works, it will still support only JavaScript, while yatag, originally written for a Node.js native addon (node-gdal-async) supports C++

Usage

Nothing is more simple:

npm install --save-dev yatag

Then create yatag.config.js with:

module.exports = {
  include: ["src/**/*.@(cpp|hpp|h|c)", "lib/*.js"],
  output: "index.d.ts",
  root: "SuperDuperModule",
  mangle: (name) => name.match(/oldfashion/g, "modern"),
  filter: (name) => !name.match(/__hidden_sys_internals/g),
  header: 'import base from \'base\'',
  footer: 'export = myDefaultExport'
};

And finally run it:

yatag

Voila, you have generated your type definitions.

If you need more complex examples, you can check those projects:

• node-gdal-async - I am actively developing the GDAL bindings for Node.js which used to be abandoned by its creator
  • ndarray-gdal is the scijs plugin
  • gdal-exprtk is the ExprTk.js plugin
• geosub - A tool for partial downloading of bands and subwindows from geospatial raster datasets from cloud storage, it is an Amazon AWS-compatible replacement for NOAA's own g2sub
• Queue - is a rather simple but useful package for rate-limiting access to external APIs