@nx/js:tsc "external" configuration deprecated

[danielsharvey]

The external configuration for the @nx/js:tsc executor is marked as deprecated. It was marked that way in a seemingly unrelated PR #22856.

The discussion:

#22856 (comment) @jaysoo - I've been following the external option with interest, sad to see it's been deprecated. Any chance you can give me some insight into the reasons for discontinuing it? Thanks!

#22856 (comment) @wjehring It is going against what TSC/SWC are supposed to do, just simply transpile files. The experimental feature has proven tricky to support in different scenarios, and we'd rather focus our attention elsewhere.

Feel free to open a discussion about it in the the Discussions tab, maybe we can address the problems properly without the current unstable feature.

A related issue from my perspective is the recently added declarations/typings support added to the @nx/esbuild/esbuild executor (see #21084 and #20688).

Under the hood, the esbuild declarations support is achieved using tsc, and as it currently standard the external configuration provided to esbuild is not mirrored in the declarations build by the executor using tsc (a limitation that can result in inconsistent between the esbuild output and declarations output).

I'm keen to know the Nx teams thoughts on the direction moving forward here. On one hand, we have external support being marked as deprecated on the other we have new features in the "tsc" space.

To my mind, tsc support (and generating declarations using tsc) is intimately connected with the library dependency graphs that are core to Nx.

Thanks!

[rachirib]

Hi community, 🆘 What's the alternative solution about this?

I have a nx workspace 19.x monorepo that have a great amount of nestjs applications (tsc) with some common libraries that have being configured with tsc build as well.

Currently everything works as I have the external: none set so it copies all the monorepo common libs inline nicely, though as soon as this is removed, breaks apart.

Does this mean that we need to bundle our apps and libs with a different than tsc or swc if monorepo common libs are used? Any doco that can lead me into understanding the migration path would be greatly appreciated.

[rachirib]

Found something helpful for anyone getting here as well
#27150 (comment)