Introduction to Strict Compiler Options

Introduction to TypeScript compiler options

The TypeScript compiler uses the tsconfig.json file to specify a number of compilation options. These options include:

• What version of JavaScript we would like to generate for.

• What the output directory should be.

• Whether or not to allow JavaScript source files within the project directory.

Significance of the strict compiler option

One of the most important options is simply named strict, and this single option turns on a group of other compiler options.

The purpose of the strict compiler options is to apply a number of checks to our code and determine whether any of these checks fail.

As an example, these strict options can determine if a variable could be undefined at the time of use or if the variable itself is never used. If we set the value of the strict option to false or turn it off, then each of these options needs to be turned on individually. We will explore these other strict options in detail.

The strict option is the default that is used when creating a new TypeScript project, and we should strive to keep this option turned on. Relaxing the strict compiler options used by the TypeScript compiler should always be done very carefully and should be a deliberate act. There are, however, occasions when we should allow for the strict options to be relaxed.