typescript - ts-node ignores d.ts files while tsc successfully compiles the project

Question

Having compiled my TypeScript project successfully, I intended to run it in VS Code's debug mode using ts-node. Problem is, ts-node can't find d.ts files I created (while tsc has no problem with it).

Project structure is:

/
    conf/
    dist/
    src/
        types/
package.json
tsconfig.json

tsconfig.json relevant entries are:

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "target": "es2017",
        "module": "commonjs",
        // "lib": [],
        "sourceMap": true,
        "outDir": "dist",
        "rootDir": "src",
        "moduleResolution": "node",
        "baseUrl": ".",
        "paths": {
            "*": [
                "node_modules/*",
                "src/types/*"
            ]
        },
        // "rootDirs": [],
        // "typeRoots": [],
        // "types": [],
    },
    "include": [
        "src/**/*"
    ]
}

The definition file ts-node can't find is src/types/global.d.ts:

import { App } from '../App';

declare global {
    namespace NodeJS {
        interface Global {
            app: App;
        }
    }
}

So, trying to run it with ts-node I see:

TSError: ? Unable to compile TypeScript:
src/boot.ts(15,59): error TS2339: Property 'app' does not exist on type 'Global'.

How to resolve it globally? I've found that /// <reference path="./types/global.d.ts" /> does the trick but I'd have to repeat it in every file using global.app.

My TypeScript version is 3.0.1

Answer 1

I was having a similar problem, but I could not add --files, because I run ts-node by registering the module through mocha (i.e. mocha -r ts-node/register ...).

I could solve it by adding a files and a ts-node section to tsconfig.json like this:

// tsconfig.json
{
  "ts-node": {
    "files": true
  },
  "files": [
    "src/index.ts",
    "src/global.d.ts"
  ],
  "compilerOptions":{
    //...
  }
}

I hope somebody will find this useful.