How to ignore a particular directory or file for tslint?

Question

Update for tslint v5.8.0

As mentioned by Saugat Acharya, you can now update tslint.json CLI Options:

{
  "extends": "tslint:latest",
  "linterOptions": {
      "exclude": [
          "bin",
          "lib/*generated.js"
      ]
  }
}

More information in this pull request.

---

This feature has been introduced with tslint 3.6

tslint \"src/**/*.ts\" -e \"**/__test__/**\"

You can now add --exclude (or -e) see PR here.

CLI

usage: tslint [options] file ...

Options:

-c, --config          configuration file
--force               return status code 0 even if there are lint errors
-h, --help            display detailed help
-i, --init            generate a tslint.json config file in the current working directory
-o, --out             output file
-r, --rules-dir       rules directory
-s, --formatters-dir  formatters directory
-e, --exclude         exclude globs from path expansion
-t, --format          output format (prose, json, verbose, pmd, msbuild, checkstyle)  [default: "prose"]
--test                test that tslint produces the correct output for the specified directory
-v, --version         current version

you are looking at using

-e, --exclude         exclude globs from path expansion

Currently using Visual Studio Code and the command to disable tslint is

/* tslint:disable */

Something to note. The disable above disables ALL tslint rules on that page. If you want to disable a specific rule you can specify one/multiple rules.

/* tslint:disable comment-format */
/* tslint:disable:rule1 rule2 rule3 etc.. */

Or enable a rule

/* tslint:enable comment-format */

More in depth on TSLint rule flags

In addition to Michael's answer, consider a second way: adding linterOptions.exclude to tslint.json

For example, you may have tslint.json with following lines:

{
  "linterOptions": {
    "exclude": [
      "someDirectory/*.d.ts"
    ]
  }
}

Starting from tslint v5.8.0 you can set an exclude property under your linterOptions key in your tslint.json file:

{
  "extends": "tslint:latest",
  "linterOptions": {
      "exclude": [
          "bin",
          "**/__test__",
          "lib/*generated.js"
      ]
  }
}

More information on this here.

I had to use the **/* syntax to exclude the files in a folder:

    "linterOptions": {
        "exclude": [
          "src/auto-generated/**/*",
          "src/app/auto-generated/**/*"
        ]
    },

There are others who encountered the problem. Unfortunately, there is only an open issue for excluding files: https://github.com/palantir/tslint/issues/73

So I'm afraid the answer is no.

linterOptions is currently only handled by the CLI. If you're not using CLI then depending on the code base you're using you'll need to set the ignore somewhere else. webpack, tsconfig, etc