TypeScript 4.4 brings performance boosts

Now in a release candidate stage, the next upgrade to Microsoft’s typed JavaScript also introduces control flow analysis and spelling suggestions in plain JavaScript files.

Editor at Large, InfoWorld |

TypeScript 4.4 brings performance boosts — Thinkstock

Microsoft’s TypeScript 4.4, the latest planned version of its popular typed version of JavaScript, has moved to a release candidate stage, with capabilities including performance improvements and control flow analysis.

No further changes are expected in the release apart from critical bug fixes.

For faster declaration emits, TypeScript now caches whether internal symbols are accessible in different contexts, along with how specific types are to be printed. This improves general performance in code with fairly complex types.

Other performance enhancements in TypeScript 4.4 promise faster path normalization and path mapping, along with faster incremental builds. An optimization has been added for source map generation of very large output files, and faster --force builds are offered as well. A -- force build does not need up-to-date checks to determine which files need to be rebuilt, with project dependencies rebuilt from scratch.

The TypeScript 4.4 release candidate, published August 12, can be accessed through NuGet or via NPM:

npm install typescript@rc

General availability of TypeScript 4.4 is planned for August 24. The beta release was published July 1. Other new capabilities in TypeScript 4.4:

TypeScript 4.4 follows the May introduction of the production release of TypeScript 4.3. Among other improvements, the TypeScript 4.3 release allowed developers to specify types for reading and writing to properties.

Paul Krill is an editor at large at InfoWorld, whose coverage focuses on application development.

How to choose a low-code development platform