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Microsoft published a beta release of TypeScript 5.0, the company’s strongly typed JavaScript variant, on January 26. The new release aims to modernise decorators for class customisation.
Decorators, an upcoming ECMAScript feature, allow for customising classes and their members in a reusable way, Microsoft noted in a blog post announcing the release.
Decorators can be used on methods, properties, getters, setters, and auto-accessors. Classes can be decorated for subclassing and registration. While TypeScript previously supported experimental decorators, these were modelled on a much older version of the decorators proposal.
Also in TypeScript 5.0, developers now can add a const modifier to a type parameter declaration to cause const-like inferences to be the default. The update also now allows the extends field to take multiple entries, and it makes all enums union enums by creating a unique type for each computed member. This means all enums can be narrowed and have their members referenced as types.
TypeScript 5.0 features changes across code structure, data structures, and algorithmic extensions, intended to speed up the entire experience of using JavaScript, even installation. Overall, TypeScript 5.0 is intended to make the language smaller, faster, and simpler. A release candidate is expected February 28, followed by general availability of a production release on March 14.
The TypeScript 5.0 beta can be accessed through NuGet or by running the following command:
npm install typescript@betaAlso in TypeScript 5.0:
- Better support is offered for ESM (ECMAScript Module) projects in Node and bundlers.
- A
–-verbatimModuleSyntaxcapability simplifies imports and exports, keeping imports or exports without atypemodifier while dropping anything using thetypemodifier. - A new JSDoc tag,
@satisfies, catches type mismatches while preserving the original type of an expression, enabling developers to use values more precisely in code. Many developers use TypeScript to type-check JavaScript code using JSDoc annotations. Also, JSDoc now can declare overloads with a new@overloadtag. - Correctness changes and deprecations are offered for less-used flags.
- TypeScript now targets ECMAScript 2018. For Node users, this means a minimum version requirement of at least Node.js 10.
The TypeScript 5.0 beta follows the November release of TypeScript 4.9, which featured a satisfies operator to catch errors. TypeScript turned 10 years old in October 2022.
