Feature request: add ability to define angular.json in TypeScript as a .ts file

[ilDon]

Bug Report or Feature Request

- [ ] bug report -> please search issues before submitting
- [x] feature request

Command (mark with an x)

- [ ] new
- [ ] build
- [ ] serve
- [ ] test
- [ ] e2e
- [ ] generate
- [ ] add
- [ ] update
- [ ] lint
- [ ] xi18n
- [ ] run
- [x] config
- [ ] help
- [ ] version
- [ ] doc

Versions

Any

Desired functionality

Currently all configuration goes into one single file angular.json.

As some projects grow in dimensions, such json file can get long (in terms of lines) and messy (in terms of number of configurations and alike). To make life easier angular-cli could support also a configuration file in TypeScript (e.g. angular.ts).

Such file could be exporting: const config: AngularConfiguration = { ... }.

This would make it possible to split the different parts of the configurations in multiple sub-files, that we could import in angular.ts configuration constant, and all other awesome things that TypeScript allows us to do.

Mention any other details that might be useful

The cli could look first for angular.json, if it does not find it, it could look for angular.ts. Then, if angular.ts is present, it could parse the exported config constant (JSON.parse(config)) and work as usual.

Eventually, we could add to the TS config file the ability to define WebPack Plugins to be added to the build process, so that we do not need to run ng eject, keeping everything tide and clean. In this case, though, we would need a deeper review of the cli, as the parse route described above would not work for this purpose.

[jonathanlie]

would love this as well. That said, is there any way we could define the project definition in just .js? Currently in need to define several custom architect commands that share common options, this would help a lot.

[fetis]

I think it relates to this #10612

[JounQin]

would love this as well. That said, is there any way we could define the project definition in just .js? Currently in need to define several custom architect commands that share common options, this would help a lot.

+1 for this, is there any news? Or related PR? But it seems a lot of Angular related tools like @storybook/angular hard codes angular.json in their source files. It maybe a BREAKING CHANGE.

[clydin]

Having the configuration be represented as data (JSON) provides support for the update and migration stories of the Angular CLI. It would drastically increase the complexity and in many cases prevent the current migration experience from occurring if the format was changed to be code instead of data. Based on this, the Angular CLI does not have any plans to expand the supported formats at this time.

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