Shorthand flags don't work with --build

[Tyriar]

TypeScript Version: 3.0.3

Search Terms:

project references
watch
build

Code

This doesn't work:

./node_modules/.bin/tsc --build -w
error TS5072: Unknown build option '-w'.

This does:

./node_modules/.bin/tsc --build --watch

Related Issues: #25613

[RyanCavanaugh]

We only have a few build flags at the moment (and intend to add more later), so for the time being we're not assigning single-letter variants. Once we're more confident that watch will be the most common w option, we'll make the shorthand equivalents work

[Tyriar]

@RyanCavanaugh but -w is already the shorthand for --watch when using tsc without --build. Isn't that really weird if -w changes conditionally based on whether or not it's used with --build?

$ tsc  --help
Version 3.0.3
...
 -w, --watch                                        Watch input files.

[RyanCavanaugh]

Just noticed we already have short flags for other stuff under --build... so yeah let's assign w to watch.

[Tyriar]

@RyanCavanaugh you forgot to reopen, also this might be a good one for help wanted/good first issue?

[sheetalkamat]

This is fixed in master?

[NeilsC]

This appears to be resolved in the nightly build:

$ npm install typescript@next

$ ./node_modules/.bin/tsc --version 
Version 3.2.0-dev.20180929

$ ./node_modules/.bin/tsc --build -w
[8:39:12 AM] Starting compilation in watch mode...