Use async / await in TypeScript targeting ES5

Question

I have a typescript project that's targeting ES5 and I am trying to determine whether or not it will be possible to use async / await.

Syntatically, the Typescript compiler will transpile the code just fine however I understand that I must provide a polyfill for 'Promise' since the object does not exist in ES5.

I am trying to use the npm 'promise' package for this, but I am encountering the following error when I include it in the same file where I have an 'async / await' function:

Duplicate identifier 'Promise'. Compiler reserves name 'Promise' in top level scope of a module containing async functions.

Therefore, I'm not sure how I can provide the 'Promise' functionality so that the code does not error at runtime.

Any workarounds for this? Thanks!

Answer 1

If you're on node.js, I recommend using ts-node. If you're developing with React, try scaffolding a starter with Create-React-App. Not sure about Angular. Instead of trying to put together your own transpiler config, these are better options that work out of the box.