Visual Studio 2019 does not recognize tsconfig.json

Question

I just installed Visual Studio 2019 and tried it with my current solution. It seems like it ignores the tsconfig.json file, while it worked in VS 2017. In Visual Studio 2017 in project properties: TypeScript Build, it shows:

One or more tsconfig.json or jsconfig.json files detected. Project properties are disabled.

This works good and compiles the files according to my tsconfig.json file.

Now the newly installed Visual Studio 2019 behaves differently. It does not show that sentence and I have to configure all the settings in the project properties. It seems like it does not recognize my tsconfig.json file at all.

How do I get VS 2019 to use the tsconfig.json instead of the project properties?

Answer 1

The Build Action property (F4) for the tsconfig.json file has to be set to Content. Otherwise Visual Studio ignores this file since VS 2019.

There is a downside though: After this change VS 2017 will complain about the Build Action:

Error NETSDK1022

Duplicate 'Content' items were included. The .NET SDK includes 'Content' items from your project directory by default. You can either remove these items from your project file, or set the 'EnableDefaultContentItems' property to 'false' if you want to explicitly include them in your project file. For more information, see https://aka.ms/sdkimplicititems. The duplicate items were: 'tsconfig.json'

Answer 2

If anyone comes here because Visual Studio 2019 builder seems to ignore the exclude section of tsconfig.json, you can invert the filters and use an include section instead, that works

VS2019 tsconfig.json Example: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/javascript/compile-typescript-code-npm?view=vs-2019