(init-templates/typescript): exclude node_modules

❓ Should node_modules not be excluded from typescript projects in tsconfig?

The Question

I don’t know whether it is intentional or not, however when initializing a Typescript app the node_modules are included into the project and will therefore be type checked and so on. This is because you override the default settings of exclude to "exclude": ["cdk.out"].

Note: without an exclude list, node_modules is excluded by default; as soon as one is added, it’s important to explicitly add node_modules to the list. (Source: Specifying Files)

Regarding the Performance recommendation by the official Typescript team, it is considered a best practice to exclude node_modules. This could easily be achieved by adding it to exclude:

https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk/blob/60875a5d6cd93b7d6f0f9b1b94153f6d1f4766b1/packages/aws-cdk/lib/init-templates/v2/app/typescript/tsconfig.json#L22

{
  // ...
  "exclude": [
    "node_modules",
    "cdk.out"
  ]
}

If you don’t mind I would create a PR myself. 😃

Environment

• CDK CLI Version: 1.76.0
• Node.js Version: v12.16.2
• OS: macOS Catalina
• Language (Version): ^4.0.2

Other information

[peterwoodworth]

Hey @bmacher, thank you for working on this! Whenever you are ready feel free to go ahead and create the PR. Integration tests won’t be necessary in this case, as you aren’t changing any actual functionality that should affect any cloudformation output

[bmacher]

Thanks @SomayaB, I will work on that.