TS2585: 'Promise' only refers to a type, but is being used as a value here

Question

I'm getting the following error

node_modules/rxjs/internal/Observable.d.ts:82:59 - error TS2585: 'Promise' only refers to a type, but is being used as a value here. Do you need to change your target library? Try changing the lib compiler option to es2015 or later.

Formatted it looks like this,

node_modules/rxjs/internal/Observable.d.ts:82:59 - error TS2585: 'Promise' only refers to a type, but is being used as a value here. Do you need to change your target library? Try changing the `lib` compiler option to es2015 or later.                                                                   

82     toPromise<T>(this: Observable<T>, PromiseCtor: typeof Promise): Promise<T>;                                                                    
                                                             ~~~~~~~


Found 1 error.

But the code I'm trying to run is right from the examples,

import { range } from 'rxjs';
import { map, filter } from 'rxjs/operators';

range(1, 200).pipe(
  filter(x => x % 2 === 1),
  map(x => x + x)
).subscribe(x => console.log(x));

I have in my tsconfig.json

"target": "ES2018",                                                                                       
"module": "es2015",   
"lib": ["es2015"],

I'm running Rx.js 6.3.3, TypeScript 3.2.2 under Node v11.6.0. I've tried

npm i --save-dev  @types/es6-promise

and just about every combination of changing lib and module

My ts config is exactly this,

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    /* Basic Options */
    "target": "ES2016",                          /* Specify ECMAScript target version: 'ES3' (default), 'ES5', 'ES2015', 'ES2016', 'ES2017','ES2018' or 'ESNEXT'. */
    "module": "es2015",                     /* Specify module code generation: 'none', 'commonjs', 'amd', 'system', 'umd', 'es2015', or 'ESNext'. */
    "lib": ["es2016"],                             /* Specify library files to be included in the compilation. */
    // "allowJs": true,                       /* Allow javascript files to be compiled. */
    // "checkJs": true,                       /* Report errors in .js files. */
    // "jsx": "preserve",                     /* Specify JSX code generation: 'preserve', 'react-native', or 'react'. */
    // "declaration": true,                   /* Generates corresponding '.d.ts' file. */
    // "declarationMap": true,                /* Generates a sourcemap for each corresponding '.d.ts' file. */
    // "sourceMap": true,                     /* Generates corresponding '.map' file. */
    // "outFile": "./",                       /* Concatenate and emit output to single file. */
    // "outDir": "./",                        /* Redirect output structure to the directory. */
    // "rootDir": "./",                       /* Specify the root directory of input files. Use to control the output directory structure with --outDir. */
    // "composite": true,                     /* Enable project compilation */
    // "removeComments": true,                /* Do not emit comments to output. */
    // "noEmit": true,                        /* Do not emit outputs. */
    // "importHelpers": true,                 /* Import emit helpers from 'tslib'. */
    // "downlevelIteration": true,            /* Provide full support for iterables in 'for-of', spread, and destructuring when targeting 'ES5' or 'ES3'. */
    // "isolatedModules": true,               /* Transpile each file as a separate module (similar to 'ts.transpileModule'). */

    /* Strict Type-Checking Options */
    "strict": true,                           /* Enable all strict type-checking options. */
    // "noImplicitAny": true,                 /* Raise error on expressions and declarations with an implied 'any' type. */
    // "strictNullChecks": true,              /* Enable strict null checks. */
    // "strictFunctionTypes": true,           /* Enable strict checking of function types. */
    // "strictBindCallApply": true,           /* Enable strict 'bind', 'call', and 'apply' methods on functions. */
    // "strictPropertyInitialization": true,  /* Enable strict checking of property initialization in classes. */
    // "noImplicitThis": true,                /* Raise error on 'this' expressions with an implied 'any' type. */
    // "alwaysStrict": true,                  /* Parse in strict mode and emit "use strict" for each source file. */

    /* Additional Checks */
    // "noUnusedLocals": true,                /* Report errors on unused locals. */
    // "noUnusedParameters": true,            /* Report errors on unused parameters. */
    // "noImplicitReturns": true,             /* Report error when not all code paths in function return a value. */
    // "noFallthroughCasesInSwitch": true,    /* Report errors for fallthrough cases in switch statement. */

    /* Module Resolution Options */
    "moduleResolution": "node",            /* Specify module resolution strategy: 'node' (Node.js) or 'classic' (TypeScript pre-1.6). */
    // "baseUrl": "./",                       /* Base directory to resolve non-absolute module names. */
    // "paths": {},                           /* A series of entries which re-map imports to lookup locations relative to the 'baseUrl'. */
    // "rootDirs": [],                        /* List of root folders whose combined content represents the structure of the project at runtime. */
    // "typeRoots": [],                       /* List of folders to include type definitions from. */
    // "types": [],                           /* Type declaration files to be included in compilation. */
    // "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,  /* Allow default imports from modules with no default export. This does not affect code emit, just typechecking. */
    "esModuleInterop": true                   /* Enables emit interoperability between CommonJS and ES Modules via creation of namespace objects for all imports. Implies 'allowSyntheticDefaultImports'. */
    // "preserveSymlinks": true,              /* Do not resolve the real path of symlinks. */

    /* Source Map Options */
    // "sourceRoot": "",                      /* Specify the location where debugger should locate TypeScript files instead of source locations. */
    // "mapRoot": "",                         /* Specify the location where debugger should locate map files instead of generated locations. */
    // "inlineSourceMap": true,               /* Emit a single file with source maps instead of having a separate file. */
    // "inlineSources": true,                 /* Emit the source alongside the sourcemaps within a single file; requires '--inlineSourceMap' or '--sourceMap' to be set. */

    /* Experimental Options */
    // "experimentalDecorators": true,        /* Enables experimental support for ES7 decorators. */
    // "emitDecoratorMetadata": true,         /* Enables experimental support for emitting type metadata for decorators. */
  }
}

Answer 1

Problem

TypeScript has two modes.

1. A project-builder mode (when tsc is invoked with no arguments)
2. A compile-mode (when tsc is invoked with any arguments) which does not read from the configuration file tsconfig.json

If that sounds confusing, it's even more confusing when you account for

1. the flag for the compiler-mode to accept a configuration file is called --project
2. inside the project-builder's configuration file there the pragma is called "compilerOptions"
3. the compiler-mode and the project-builder mode accept the same configuration file

Anyway, the problem here was that TypeScript was simply ignoring the configuration file in the current working directory that I was running it in.

If you want to see this changed vote here,

• https://twitter.com/TheEvanCarroll/status/1080899909522477061

This is further reported here,

• https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/issues/29241

Answer 2

Just install @types/node from npm. This should solve the problem.

npm install @types/node

Answer 3

In my case I simply added a tsconfig.json file with the following contents where the significant part relating to the above error is "target": "es2015":

{
    "compilerOptions": {
        "noImplicitAny": false,
        "noEmitOnError": true,
        "removeComments": false,
        "sourceMap": true,
        "target": "es2015"
    },
    "include": [
        "file.ts"
    ],
    "exclude": [
        "node_modules",
        "wwwroot"
    ]
}

Answer 4

Use this while compiling.

tsc async_await.ts --lib es2015