Allow blacklisting paths in auto import suggestions

[chriswoodie]

Suggestion

🔍 Search Terms

• blacklist path
• exclude path
• blacklist auto import path
• exclude auto import path

✅ Viability Checklist

My suggestion meets these guidelines:

• This wouldn't be a breaking change in existing TypeScript/JavaScript code
• This wouldn't change the runtime behavior of existing JavaScript code
• This could be implemented without emitting different JS based on the types of the expressions
• This isn't a runtime feature (e.g. library functionality, non-ECMAScript syntax with JavaScript output, new syntax sugar for JS, etc.)
• This feature would agree with the rest of TypeScript's Design Goals.

⭐ Suggestion

Allow blacklisting/exclusion of auto import paths.

Here are some possible solutions as I see it:

• Allow blacklisting/excluding paths for auto imports
• Suggest all possible paths and let the developer choose which path is correct

📃 Motivating Example

In certain scenarios, such as when using a monorepo with Angular and Nx, you will have an index.ts file for your libraries which acts as the entry point. This creates huge issues when using project-relative imports in VSC, as it suggests the index.ts file instead of the actual file when working with imports that are inside the same library. Using the index.ts file will cause any app consuming the library to crash due to what I assume are circular dependencies.

Here I expect to get ../../helpers/global/is-external-url instead of ../../../index:

💻 Use Cases

What do you want to use this for?
See above explanation.

What shortcomings exist with current approaches?
It's really easy to mess up without knowing what is wrong, and there isn't a way to solve this currently as far as I'm aware.

What workarounds are you using in the meantime?

• Added an ESLint rule that shows an error when using an index.ts import, still doesn't prevent compilation so you might not even notice that you have an error until you try to build (assuming you have ESLint check enabled when building)
• Using "Quick Fix" and then choosing the correct import path there, but this is annoying and wastes your time. The correct path should show up when typing.

[fatcerberus]

Basically the same issue as #45953.

[RyanCavanaugh]

Yeah, duplicate of either that one or #35395 depending on the use case

[typescript-bot]

This issue has been marked as a 'Duplicate' and has seen no recent activity. It has been automatically closed for house-keeping purposes.