Spurious "Identifier 'angular' must be imported from a module" error

[jonrimmer]

TypeScript Version:

2.0.2

Code

https://github.com/jonrimmer/typescript-bug

npm install
./node_modules/.bin/tsc bug.ts

Expected behavior:

It should compile without problems.

Actual behavior:

It gives the following error:

node_modules/angular-ui-router/commonjs/ng1/services.d.ts(2,27): error TS2686: Identifier 'angular' must be imported from a module

This is despite the fact that the @type/angular definitions includes a global angular var declaration.

[Gugic]

I have the same problems (trying to switch from typings to @types in my project)

To be more clear:
I just change my typings setup (angular, jquery, lodash, angular-ui-router) with same @types and

    "typeRoots": ["node_modules/@types"],
    "types": ["lodash", "jquery", "angular", "angular-ui-router"]

in my tsconfig.json and starting to get dozens of "Identifier 'angular' must be imported from a module" errors during my webpack build.

Typescript 2.0 and 2.0.2, webpack 2.1-beta.21+awesome-typesript-loader.

[mhegazy]

this is an issue in angular-ui-router declaration file. The compiler tries to ensure that a UMD module is used consistently, either as a module or as a global.

File: node_modules\angular-ui-router\commonjs\ng1\services.d.ts

should be:

import * as angular from "angular";
import IInjectorService = angular.auto.IInjectorService;

[chrisnicola]

I don't think this is an angular-ui-router issue. I have the same problem without that installed coming from any local file that references angular.

Adding import * as angular from "angular" to every file is obviously one way to fix this, but this was not a problem before when I was using typings instead of @types. If this is just how the new type definition resolution works now then that is pretty disappointing.

[chrisnicola]

Worth noting that only angular seems to have this problem, jQuery, Lodash and others are working fine.

[mhegazy]

the rational here, is some libraries are available as either module or a global. if you are using them as a module, all references should be done this way. the warning aims to notify you about this discrepancy. this is a new feature added in TS 2.0 see https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/What%27s-new-in-TypeScript#support-for-umd-module-definitions for more details.

[chrisnicola]

I have to be honest, while I basically understand the reasoning, the choice of making this work globally only if there are no imports or exports in the file seems completely arbitrary and comes across as a bad choice for both usability and backwards compatibility. At the very least this should have been configurable or provide an easy way to work around it.

I am now spending a great deal of what feels like unnecessary time on this while trying to move a fairly large project towards Angular 2 and Typescript 2 and this is creating unnecessary friction. If every update to the Typescript project is going to just add a new bar to jump over like this I'm really going to need to reconsider using it.

So far I've found this to be a common pattern with using Typescript. Many inexplicable behaviours and decisions each of which is hard to track down or find documentation around.

[RyanCavanaugh]

Considering removing the restriction on UMD globals to only apply to values. There's not much point to enforce uniformity in type/namespace usage.