Publishing and importing TypeScript is a huge mistake.
Packages should just compile TypeScript to JS and publish that as they do now.
Packages should just compile TypeScript to JS and publish that as they do now.
The jvm can’t run Java source files directly and needs a build step, so to the extent that the build step is not portable, it makes sense to ship the built version. Jars are also used for dynamic imports where doing the build at runtime would be expensive.
By comparison, runtimes like Deno can run TS directly now. There is no separate build step required. After all, it’s a scripting language! The fact that it has a compile step at all is just baggage at this point.
That ability might be very valuable for the development loop, but it cannot be intended for dependencies because source compatibility is very low in the priorities list of TS.
In JVM words: where scala seems to have given up on cross-version compatibility of the complied code, forcing cross building upon library authors and dependency registries but succeeds in sufficient source compatibility to enable that cross building, TS, due to being bound to baseline JS as output anyways, does the inverse. The output works across versions (how could it not, when it's meant to work across languages), but with that a given it can take its liberties with input (source) compatibility.
The mistake was to allow multiple half-assed implementations of JS modules in the ecosystem.