How to publish TypeScript modules on NPM without “dist” in import?

I found a pretty clean solution that doesn’t require copying your package.json into your dist or publishing from dist.

You can structure your project as:

package.json (for entire project)
src
 | secondary-package-name
   |- index.ts
secondary-package-name
 |- package.json (for secondary-module-name)
dist
 |- generated files

the package.json for your secondary module just needs to contain

{
  "name": "package/secondary-package-name",
  "private": true,
  "main": "../dist/secondary-package-name/index.js"
}

to point back to your dist

You should then be able to reference exports from the secondary package like so:

import { someFn } from "package/secondary-package-name"

provided it is exported from the index.ts file in that directory

You’ll also need to make sure the files field of your main package.json includes:

"files": [
    "dist",
    "secondary-package-name"
  ],