Angular Library Build fails with NON-descriptive error [object Object]

Current Behavior

Setup:

• EDIT it turned out the error can be triggered by generating a lib and changing its name in the inline package.json from @org/a/b/c to @org/a-b-c without adjusting the paths in tsconfig.base.json
• 3 libs with no implementation ui -> feature -> shell
• all libs created created using --buildable flag
• shell consumed by an example application
• build triggered using nx build

The build fails for the feature lib with a very NON-descriptive error [object Object]

Expected Behavior

Build works or at least fails with a descriptive error

Workaround

Adding console.error() to the following place, based on my understanding the NX catches all the re-thrown errors on some higher level and tries to stringify them which leads to [object Object] so maybe there can be some more robust logic to detect if error is an object of different sorts and come up with more destriptive error in that case?

Failure Logs

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Building entry point '@org/some-lib'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[object Object] <--- this is really not helpful

With workaround

FatalDiagnosticError {
  code: 3004,
  node: <ref *1> SourceFileObject {
    pos: 0,
    end: 0,
    flags: 0,
    modifierFlagsCache: 0,
    transformFlags: 0,
    parent: undefined,
    kind: 303,
    statements: [ pos: 0, end: 0, hasTrailingComma: false, transformFlags: 0 ],
    endOfFileToken: TokenObject {
      pos: 0,
      end: 0,
      flags: 0,
      modifierFlagsCache: 0,
      transformFlags: 0,
      parent: [Circular *1],
      kind: 1
    },
    fileName: '/home/tomastrajan/projects/mobi/rwc-b2e-workspace/libs/b2e/public/ui/button/src/lib/button/button.component.ngtypecheck.ts',
    text: '',
    languageVersion: 99,
    languageVariant: 0,
    scriptKind: 3,
    isDeclarationFile: false,
    hasNoDefaultLib: false,
    externalModuleIndicator: undefined,
    bindDiagnostics: [],
    bindSuggestionDiagnostics: undefined,
    pragmas: Map(0) {},
    checkJsDirective: undefined,
    referencedFiles: [],
    typeReferenceDirectives: [],
    libReferenceDirectives: [],
    amdDependencies: [],
    commentDirectives: undefined,
    nodeCount: 2,
    identifierCount: 0,
    identifiers: Map(0) {},
    parseDiagnostics: []
  },
  message: {
    category: 3,
    code: 0,
    messageText: 'Unable to import symbol ButtonComponent.',
    next: [ [Object] ]
  },
  relatedInformation: [
    {
      category: 3,
      code: 0,
      file: [SourceFileObject],
      start: 44,
      length: 162,
      messageText: 'The symbol is declared here.'
    }
  ],
  _isFatalDiagnosticError: true
}
[object Object]

Environment

>  NX   Report complete - copy this into the issue template

   Node : 14.16.0
   OS   : linux x64
   npm  : 6.14.11

   nx : 13.8.3
   @nrwl/angular : 13.8.3
   @nrwl/cli : 13.8.3
   @nrwl/cypress : 13.8.3
   @nrwl/detox : undefined
   @nrwl/devkit : 13.8.3
   @nrwl/eslint-plugin-nx : 13.8.3
   @nrwl/express : undefined
   @nrwl/jest : 13.8.3
   @nrwl/js : 13.8.3
   @nrwl/linter : 13.8.3
   @nrwl/nest : undefined
   @nrwl/next : undefined
   @nrwl/node : undefined
   @nrwl/nx-cloud : undefined
   @nrwl/react : undefined
   @nrwl/react-native : undefined
   @nrwl/schematics : undefined
   @nrwl/storybook : 13.8.3
   @nrwl/tao : 13.8.3
   @nrwl/web : 13.8.3
   @nrwl/workspace : 13.8.3
   typescript : 4.5.5
   rxjs : 7.4.0
   ---------------------------------------
   Community plugins:
         @angular/animations: 13.2.2
         @angular/common: 13.2.2
         @angular/compiler: 13.2.2
         @angular/core: 13.2.2
         @angular/forms: 13.2.2
         @angular/platform-browser: 13.2.2
         @angular/platform-browser-dynamic: 13.2.2
         @angular/router: 13.2.2
         @angular-devkit/build-angular: 13.2.3
         @angular/cli: 13.2.3
         @angular/compiler-cli: 13.2.2
         @angular/language-service: 13.2.2

[davidmarquis]

I had the same error and your workaround helped me diagnose the issue, thanks for that!

I would add that as far as my workspace was concerned, running nx reset (clearing Nx caches) fixed the issue and allowed me to build the library.

[leosvelperez]

@tomastrajan it does make sense. I had a look again at the error object you shared above and I can see why [object Object] is being printed. We print the error.message as is because that property is expected to be a string and not a complex object. In the error above is a complex object which is wrong and it turns out that the FatalDiagnosticError shouldn’t be thrown and instead be converted to a ts.Diagnostics, this is an issue in the @angular/compiler-cli that’s being reported here.