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Comment

Following up from #58417

Note: This is only for argumentless tsc --init. We know that it's physically possible to write text after --init and that text could do something, but that's a separate issue. Since tsc --init should do something, this issue is only about what that something is.

General consensus from the design meeting + external discussion:

• No one likes the huge wall of text
• Not many people like the commented-out options, and certainly not the "terrible idea" commented-out options
• "module": "commonjs" is a hard no

Other live issues:

• Should we set '"types": []' for 'tsc init'? #39354 - set types to [] - yes
• Increase default tsc --init target over time #49206, Make tsc --init generate default target to ES6 or higher #39308 - increase default target - also yes
• Enable "useDefineForClassFields" in tsc --init #39311 - set udfcf - I would argue moot by now since we should set the target high enough that this doesn't matter
• Consult package.json contents when creating tsconfig.json under tsc --init to determine better defaults #51207 - consult package.json - it's not obvious that your package.json is configured yet at the time you run tsc --init, this seems marginal

Other things we didn't get to:

• rootDir, outDir: These are generally a good idea; no one likes the default side-by-side JS emit buuut there aren't strictly universal conventions here

Proposed new output:

{
    // For more info, see https://aka.ms/tsconfig
    // Or use the tsc-init wizard: https://aka.ms/tsc-init
    "compilerOptions": {
        "target": "es2022",
        "module": "nodenext",
        "rootDir": "./src",
        "outDir": "./dist",

        // For nodejs, add "node" to this array,
        // and remove "dom" from "lib"
        "types": [],
        "lib": ["dom", "es2022"],

        // Other outputs
        "sourceMap": true,
        // "declaration: true,

        // Typechecking options
        "noUncheckedIndexedAccess": true,
        "exactOptionalPropertyTypes": true,

        // Style options
        // "noImplicitReturns": true,
        // "noImplicitOverride": true,
        // "noUnusedLocals": true,
        // "noUnusedParameters": true,
        // "noFallthroughCasesInSwitch": true,
        // "noPropertyAccessFromIndexSignature": true,

        // We recommend all of these options
        "verbatimModuleSyntax": true,
        "isolatedModules": true,
        "moduleDetection": "force",
        "skipLibCheck": true,
        "strict": true
    }
}

I tried to order this from "most likely to edit" to "least likely to edit"