tsc --module always generates the same output no matter the argument

Question

I'm pretty new to Javascript, NodeJS and --obviously-- TypeScript. I'd like to experiment with the compiler services in src/services (Windows) to provide intellisense, etc. for an editor.

As far as I can tell, I need to be able to require the TypeScript services code in a NodeJS server and communicate with that from the editor. I couldn't find any NodeJS-specific TypeScript services code, so I think I'd have to compile the services code with --module amd to make it available to NodeJS via RequireJS.

If the above is correct, my attempts to compile the services code with --module amd yield exactly the same results as using the default module kind (see below).

$ tsc.cmd --module amd --out amd.js .\languageService.ts
$ tsc.cmd --out comm.js .\languageService.ts
$ diff.exe .\amd.js .\comm.js
$

Answer 1

This is admittedly confusing, but the code in languageService.ts isn't in a 'module' in the sense of AMD/RequireJS's definition of 'module'.

The spec refers to things inside a module block as "internal modules". That's what you're seeing in languageService.ts. You can think of them more like containers or singletons that expose a top-level name (looking at the code gen for a simple internal module clarifies this quite a bit). You consume these like regular top-level objects without any module loader at all.

Producing external modules (as named by the spec) for require is done by putting the export directive on a top-level declaration in a .ts file (see spec section 9.2.1). There are some samples (e.g. imageboard) available for download that do this if you're interested.

Answer 2

You have to have your modules defined as export module, not your module and then compile it with --m amd or --module amd.

Took me few hours to realize :)