Intellisense for npm: prefixed imports in VS Code

[mootari]

Starting as a free form exploration until something actionable comes out of it.

It is my understanding that even with a Framework language server we would not be able to automatically resolve npm: prefixed imports outside of Framework Markdown files.

VS Code offers Automatic Type Acquisition in JavaScript projects by looking up DT type definitions and downloading them automatically.

TypeScript (and by extension jsconfig) allows non-relative paths to be remapped, with limited support for globbing. I would expect that something like the following jsconfig.json might work:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": ".",
    "paths": {
      "npm:*": ["./src/.observablehq/cache/_npm/*"]
    }
  },
}

However, I haven't been able to get any completions this way yet. I'll have to figure out where and how vscode resolves these paths internally.

Edit: On closer inspection the problem with that specific remapping is that Framework does not store the entire package, and that vscode therefore won't be able to resolve it (it relies on npm). I'm guessing that for it to work Framework would somehow have to preserve the types.