Docs on writing generators in TypeScript

[emileindik]

Is it possible to use yeoman with typescript?
If so, are there any sample generators written in typescript that you could point me to?

[mshima]

I know it’s possible because of yeoman/environment#164.
I don’t know any public generator or example.

I know that environment lookup and yo command doesn’t lists ts generators.
But I will change that.

[StfBauer]

@emileindik The Microsoft Teams generator uses typescript you see how this project is set up there https://github.com/pnp/generator-teams

[jvanmelckebeke]

Sorry my answer is very late, I discovered this issue just today.

For clarification for future issue readers: yes it is possible to create a generator in typescript, however keep the following things in mind:

1. your target JS flavour is esnext
2. your target outDir is lib/ ( not dist/, apparently this directory does not get scanned by the yeoman generator discovery tool)

Hope this helps for future developers who want to create a generator in typescript

[gliviu]

For anyone looking for a quick start here is a template you could use to create new ts generators generator-typescript-template

[juliankrieger]

@jvanmelckebeke The way I solved it is to build to dist, but write a script that copies the package.json into dist as well as only keeping dependencies, not dev dependencies

[chanind]

If you want to run a generator locally in a project, you can just use ts-node and run: ts-node node_modules/.bin/yo ./path/to/generator, and then your generator can be fully in typescript.

[RobertLowe]

Yeah, I want this. All said, it's really annoying to have to manage a build script and transpiled files, I wish this was seamless.

[Carlosf96]

Yeah, I want this. All said, it's really annoying to have to manage a build script and transpiled files, I wish this was seamless.

I too wish it was seamless UwU.

[JoshuaKGoldberg]

Transferring over to the website repo as this is a docs request. Cheers! 🎩

[JoshuaKGoldberg]

...and now triaging as a maintainer: I'm in support of this in general. I don't think we need a full section of the site, but maybe just an FAQ in https://yeoman.io/learning/faq explaining that:

• The concepts are all the same - you're just running JS code
• You have to compile .ts files to .js before yo can run them

Also relevant: yeoman/generator-generator#248 would be helpful.

cc @UlisesGascon