⚗️ TypeScript-only package with Node 22.6

[NatoBoram]

An attempt at using TypeScript without a compilation process

📝 Description

Node.js added --experimental-strip-types in v22.6.0, which allows it to run TypeScript files without a compilation process.

Avoiding the build step to run Node.js TypeScript applications could be very useful for all projects running directly with Node, like Express applications. It can drastically simplify the deployment process, particularly with Cloud Functions.

However, published CLI apps might not work if --experimental-strip-types cannot be passed to files listed in bin. Additionally, published libraries will not work on the browser unless a bundler is used, which is already expected from modern front-end development.

I am expecting --experimental-strip-types to be the default behaviour in the release of Node 23.

Overall, it seems like a TypeScript-only package would cause a very minimal amount of friction in the ecosystem due to browsers always being late to the party.

• Enable allowImportingTsExtensions and noEmit in tsconfig.json
• Change imports for .ts
• Export directly from src
• Set engines to node >=22.6
• Updated GitHub Workflows to node-version: >= 22.6
• Uninstall tsx from the devDependencies

📓 References

• module: add --experimental-strip-types nodejs/node#53725
• Experienced a blocker due to Unable to find Node version 'lts' actions/setup-node#761
• https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v22.6.0
• https://nodejs.org/api/typescript.html
• https://nodejs.org/api/errors.html#err_unsupported_node_modules_type_stripping
• bug: cannot import typescript file from npm package denoland/deno#16790
• https://jsr.io

Type stripping in dependencies

To discourage package authors from publishing packages written in TypeScript, Node.js will by default refuse to handle TypeScript files inside folders under a node_modules path.

[NatoBoram]

TypeScript-only packages are explicitly disallowed by NPMJS, but they are encouraged on JSR. It might be time to consider changing default package registry for publishing.

However, this repo's goal is to remain compatible with Node's defaults - for example, I'm using pnpm but one could still downgrade to npm.