Compiler outputs files to the wrong directory structure

[enlight]

I've noticed a couple of issues with the way the compiler resolves the output directory structure. I've created a minimal project that can be used to reproduce these issues, it's setup as an NPM package, so after cloning/extracting run npm install to install the latest nightly build of TypeScript (support for filenames in the --project compiler option was added very recently).

Issue 1

From the package root run

node ./node_modules/typescript/bin/tsc --project src/good-tsconfig.json

Note that the output directory structure is (as expected):

lib/
  first/
    file1.js
  second/
    file2.js

Now run

node ./node_modules/typescript/bin/tsc --project src/bad-tsconfig.json

Note that the output directory structure is missing the subdir second:

lib2/
  file2.js

While the expected output directory structure is:

lib2/
  second/
    file2.js

Issue 2

I'm not sure if this is a bug or just user error, but it can be reproduced starting with TypeScript 1.6.2 (and possibly earlier, that's just the oldest version I've tried). Run

node ./node_modules/typescript/bin/tsc --project src/second

Note that the output directory structure is:

lib3/
  second/
    first/
      file1.js
    second/
      file2.js

While the expected output directory structure is:

lib3/
  first/
    file1.js
  second/
    file2.js

[falsandtru]

--rootDir option will solve your issue. See: https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/Compiler-Options

[enlight]

Thanks for the tip @falsandtru. Setting rootDir to . in bad-tsconfig.json does indeed solve the first issue, though it seems to me like that ought to be the default value of rootDir anyway.

Unfortunately I can't seem to fix the second issue by setting rootDir, I've tried modifying src/second/tsconfig.json like so:

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "module": "commonjs",
        "target": "es6",
        "noImplicitAny": true,
        "sourceMap": false,
        "declaration": false,
        "noLib": false,
        "outDir": "../../lib3",
        "rootDir": ".."
    },
    "files": [
        "first/file1.ts",
        "second/file2.ts"
    ]
}

but the compiler then fails to find the source files:

error TS6053: File 'src/second/first/file1.ts' not found.
error TS6053: File 'src/second/second/file2.ts' not found.

[falsandtru]

Correct code:

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "module": "commonjs",
        "target": "es6",
        "noImplicitAny": true,
        "sourceMap": false,
        "declaration": false,
        "noLib": false,
        "outDir": "../../lib3",
        "rootDir": ".."
    },
    "files": [
        "../first/file1.ts",
        "../second/file2.ts"
    ]
}

[enlight]

That does indeed work, thanks @falsandtru.

[falsandtru]

Not at all. Let's complete a issue with closing of it.

[enlight]

For future reference, the explanation of the rootDir option in #2772 is vastly better than the two short sentences written about it in https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/Compiler-Options