Recommendation: Write plug-ins using TypeScript

[Gk0Wk]

I think larger projects should switch to using TypeScript instead of JavaScript, which helps reduce the cost of maintaining the code and the difficulty of writing it. This has the added benefit that I and others have implemented TiddlyWiki5's TypeScript definition: TW5-Typed, which can make development easier.

Here is a template project for developing TW plugins based on TypeScript, supporting both GitHub Action builds as well as local builds (using some of my previous work, such as tw5-plugin-packer, to implement GitHub Action builds and local builds of plugins).

[Gk0Wk]

Then, of course, can package Monaco into an offline version.

[SmilyOrg]

TypeScript is great, however I'd like to avoid huge or slow compile steps (e.g. webpack) if possible. I'll have to check out TW5-Typed and the other links in a bit, thanks!

[Gk0Wk]

I use Rollup to package CodeMirror-Enhanced and it takes about a few seconds to finish the build. So I think it can be done fast enough using rollup.

Further, you can also use esbuild, which is claimed to be the fastest TS compiler ever, although there are still some contents that cannot be packaged with esbuild, I think it's enough just for TW plugins.

If you think it's ok, next week I'll try to transform the monaco plugin into a ts project built using esbuild or rollup.

[SmilyOrg]

TW5-Typed is indeed a cool project! I keep having to search for functions in TW5 source to know what's even available and how to call it 😓

But I'm wondering if bundling is even necessary? Maybe not?

Could we also just use tsc / tsc --watch to convert .ts to .js during build/dev instead of using esbuild/rollup?

Would be interesting to see what it would look like with TypeScript, I definitely started with JS mostly because it was easier to set up at first.