Borislav Hadzhiev
Mon Mar 21 2022·2 min read
Photo by Holly Mandarich
The error "No inputs were found in config file" occurs when we try to build a
project that does not contain any TypeScript files. To solve the error, add an
empty file with a .ts
extension in your project's root directory and restart
your IDE if necessary.
tsc # error TS18003: No inputs were found in config file. # Specified 'include' paths were '["**/*"]' and # 'exclude' paths were '["node_modules"]'.
The first thing you need to do is make sure your project contains at least one
file with a .ts
extension.
If it doesn't, you can create an empty file with a .ts
extension to silence
the error.
Create a file called placeholder.ts
with the following contents:
export {};
If you have set the include
array in your tsconfig.json
file, make sure to
create the file in the specified directory.
{ "compilerOptions": { // ... your options }, "include": ["src/**/*"], "exclude": ["node_modules"] }
For example, the include
array from the tsconfig.json
file above looks for
files in the src
directory, so you would have to create the placeholder file
in src
.
include
array, create the placeholder file in your project's root directory (next to tsconfig.json
).If you already have files in your project, restart your IDE and TypeScript server.
VSCode often glitches and needs a reboot. In that case, open a file with a .ts
or .js
extension and restart the editor for it to pick it up.
Another thing that causes the error is if you add all the files in your
TypeScript project to the exclude
array by mistake.
{ "compilerOptions": { // ... your options }, "include": ["src/**/*"], "exclude": ["node_modules"] }
If you don't set the include
array setting it defaults to **
if the files
setting is not specified,
otherwise an empty array []
.
exclude
pattern that matches all of the files in your project, that's the cause of the error.Most of the time, TypeScript just needs an entry point to your project to be able to compile successfully and solve the error.
If you don't use TypeScript in your project, but still get the error, and a
restart of your IDE doesn't help things, you can create a tsconfig.json
file
in your project's root directory to simply silence the error.
{ "compilerOptions": { "allowJs": false, "noEmit": true }, "exclude": ["src/**/*", "your-other-src/**/*"], "files": ["placeholder.ts"] }
And create a placeholder.ts
file right next to the tsconfig.json
file.
export {};
Restart your IDE and the error should be resolved.
The tsconfig.json
file from the example above, looks to exclude all of your
source files from compilation and just needs a single file as an entry point
(placeholder.js
) in the example.
The whole point of this tsconfig.json
file is to silence the error in projects
that don't use TypeScript.