Better support for code using "export="

[Gerrit0]

Search Terms

module.exports, export assignment, export=

Problem

In 0.20, TypeDoc relies on the type checker to get exports - this works fine for the majority of TypeScript projects, but has resulted in worse support for legacy common JS projects that do bad things like this:

export = function () {} // 1
export = { a, b, c, } // 2
export = 1 // 3
type Z = 1
export = Z // 4
function a() {}
namespace a {}
export = a // 5

Suggested Solution

This is somewhat tricky to solve - # 2 above can be handled nicely by just "lifting" the "export=" symbol's properties so that they are documented under the parent module, but this breaks other cases.

# 1 and # 5 can probably be handled by setting the "signatures" property on the module...

But # 3 and # 4 are an extra level of horrible. The first should really be documented as a variable and the second as a type... I want to believe that people wouldn't do this, but...

[Gerrit0]

This gets worse! In JS, export= doesn't mean that other stuff can't be exported. #1476.... if you're using this. Please do your users a favor and give them a named export.

/** @typedef {string} Str */
/** */
module.exports = function() {}

[Gerrit0]

I expected a lot more interest in this - but am quite happy it's seen effectively no activity, since actually implementing this would make TypeDoc's already complicated "getExports" function much worse. I'm going to close this as not planned.