Typescript build output misses some files

Question

So I recently added typescript to my ExpressJS project (and it's still magic for me).

I'm trying to build an app in a /dist directory (.ts -->.js), but it doesn't generate swagger.yaml file NOR sequelize-cli folder.

Making some changes in tsconfig.json does literally nothing, which is really weird for me.

My project structure:

- dist/
  - api/**
  - classes/**
  - interfaces/**
  - sequelize/**
  - server.ts

- src/
  - api/**
  - classes/**
  - interfaces/**
  - sequelize/**
  - sequelize-cli/**
  - server.ts
  - swagger.yaml

- .dockerignore
- .env
- .gitignore
- .sequelizerc
- Dockerfile
- package-lock.json
- package.json
- tsconfig.json

* not important subdirectories & files

My package.json:

{
  "name": "random-name",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "src/server.js",
  "scripts": {
    "prod": "node dist/server.js",
    "dev": "npm run build && node dist/server.js",
    "build": "tsc"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "bcrypt": "^5.1.0",
    "cookie-parser": "^1.4.6",
    "dotenv": "^16.0.3",
    "express": "^4.18.2",
    "jsonwebtoken": "^8.5.1",
    "mysql2": "^2.3.3",
    "sequelize": "^6.25.3",
    "sequelize-cli": "^6.5.2",
    "swagger-ui-express": "^4.5.0",
    "yamljs": "^0.3.0"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@types/bcrypt": "^5.0.0",
    "@types/cookie-parser": "^1.4.3",
    "@types/express": "^4.17.14",
    "@types/jsonwebtoken": "^8.5.9",
    "@types/node": "^18.11.5",
    "@types/swagger-ui-express": "^4.1.3",
    "@types/yamljs": "^0.2.31",
    "nodemon": "^2.0.20",
    "ts-node": "^10.9.1",
    "typescript": "^4.8.4"
  }
}

My tsconfig.json:

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "module": "CommonJS",
        "moduleResolution": "Node",
        "esModuleInterop": true,
        "target": "ES6",
        "removeComments": true,
        "rootDir": "./src",
        "outDir": "./dist",
    },
    "include": [ "src/**/*" ],
    "exclude": [ "node_modules" ]
}

I have no idea what's wrong

Answer 1

The TS compiler only deals with TypeScript and JavaScript files and you need some sort of bundler to handle other file types. However there is a solution which doesn't use a bundler.

In your package.json you can specify a script, which will

1. Run the TS compiler to create a dist folder with your compiled code.
2. Copy anything extra you need into the dist folder.
3. Run your code.

An example script for this would be -

"start": "tsc && copyfiles -u 1 src/sequelize-cli/**/* src/swagger.yaml dist && node dist/server.js"