Exclude modules from ng-build in Angular CLI... not working

Question

I have an Angular CLI project with two apps in it. Both apps are the same, but one app includes all files in the build, the other needs to exclude a module.

Angular CLI version: 1.7.4 Angular version: 5.2.10

I added two apps into the angular-cli.json file, and each has a separate ts-config file.

  "apps": [
    {
      "name": "app",   <---- first app
      "root": "src",
      "outDir": "/wwwroot",
      "assets": [
        "assets",
        "favicon.ico"
      ],
      "index": "index.html",
      "main": "main.ts",
      "polyfills": "polyfills.ts",
      "test": "test.ts",
      "tsconfig": "tsconfig.app.json",       <----first TS config
      "testTsconfig": "tsconfig.spec.json",
      "prefix": "app",
      "styles": [
        "styles.scss"
      ],
      "scripts": [],
      "environmentSource": "environments/environment.ts",
      "environments": {
        "dev": "environments/environment.ts",
        "prod": "environments/environment.prod.ts"
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "admin",   <---- second app
      "root": "src",
      "outDir": "/wwwroot",
      "assets": [
        "assets",
        "favicon.ico"
      ],
      "index": "index.html",
      "main": "main.ts",
      "polyfills": "polyfills.ts",
      "test": "test.ts",
      "tsconfig": "tsconfig.admin.json", <----- second ts config
      "testTsconfig": "tsconfig.spec.json",
      "prefix": "app",
      "styles": [
        "styles.scss"
      ],
      "scripts": [],
      "environmentSource": "environments/environment.ts",
      "environments": {
        "dev": "environments/environment.ts",
        "prod": "environments/environment.prod.ts"
      }
    }
  ],

The "admin" app will include all files. However, the first app in the app array, "app" will exclude the admin module.

The tsconfig.app.json:

{
  "extends": "../tsconfig.json",
  "compilerOptions": {
    "outDir": "../out-tsc/app",
    "baseUrl": "./",
    "module": "es2015",
    "types": []
  },
  "exclude": [
    "test.ts",
    "**/*.spec.ts",
    "app/modules/admin/"    <----- note: I want this entire directory excluded from the build. 
  ]
}

I set up two "ng-build" scripts in the package.json file.

package.json build scripts:

"scripts": {
    "build-app": "ng build -app app --prod",
    "build-admin": "ng build -app admin  --prod",
  },

To test this, I changed some text and styling in the admin module and ran the build locally. I noticed that the admin version of the app (which should build all files) works, but the "app" version of the app did NOT exclude the admin module.

Does anyone see anything missed/overlooked in the above snippets? Has anyone had similar problems and found a solution?

The angular-cli repo closed this issue but did not provide a fix. see issue here

Answer 1

If anyone is reading this and looking for an answer:

TS is going to build any files it sees an 'import' statement for regardless of if it's in the 'exclude' property in tsconfig.json.

I had a import statement in my app.modules.ts file, and when I removed that... it was successfully excluded from the builds.