Custom lib.d.ts in VisualStudio 2013 - visual-studio-2013

Question

I'm new to TypeScript and, to some extent as an excerise, I'm trying to write the beginning of a type definition file for some of Adobe's "ExtendScript" APIs, which are based on ECMAScript.
Since the host environment isn't a browser, I have the same problem that the Node.js folk have in dealing with a cluttered namespace due to the still monolithic lib.d.ts file.
So far, it's not too bad. There is a definition for File in the global scope in lib.d.ts and the ExtendScript hosting environment also defines a File in the global scope. But the collision is minor and I can live with a couple of spurious methods polluting the File interface.
I'm still wondering if I could not rather just put a copy of lib.d.ts in my project, throw most of it out and tell the compiler to use that.
Is there a way to do that? I can't see any tsc compiler option to override the lib.d.ts. I also don't see where I would specify any custom compiler options in VS.

Answer 1

You can pass the --nolib flag to the TypeScript compiler to remove the lib.d.ts definitions from the compilation...
tsc --nolib app.ts
This will remove absolutely everything from the global scope, so you will have to define all everything you need to use, which in your case is probably exactly what you want.

Answer 2

You can create another file, say mylib.d.ts, and put necessary declarations there. TypeScript will merge interface declarations into one. For example:
// First.d.ts
export interface IProtocol {
method1(): string;
}
// Second.d.ts
export interface IProtocol {
method2(): string;
}
Will be merged into a single interface automatically and both methods will be available to IProtocol instances in your app.
You can even have declare method overloads in .d.ts files. The thing you cannot do in standard .ts files.