fromPartial typescript design

[pyramation]

For certain protos (google) typescript doesn't like the Exact and DeepPartial (#107)

These meta typescript types create an issue that has been talked about here on stackoverflow as well as the ts-proto issues here

These Exact and DeepPartial types were discussed for ts-proto here

They honestly seem to be adding more issues that what they're providing — to my understanding, you can call fromPartial and it allows properties to be optional, and provides defaults.

What if we can do something much simpler for the typescript compiler, like explicitly define a typescript interface that has optional properties? Potential drawback for nested properties, but I think it could be worth adding a flag for.

UPDATE: our immediate issue can be solved similar to how this issue which was fixed by this PR

[pyramation]

example

current method

  fromPartial<I extends Exact<DeepPartial<Any>, I>>(object: I): Any {
    const message = createBaseAny();
    message.typeUrl = object.typeUrl ?? "";
    message.value = object.value ?? new Uint8Array();
    return message;
  }

new updated version

  fromPartial(object: AnyFromPartial): Any {
    const message = createBaseAny();
    message.typeUrl = object.typeUrl ?? "";
    message.value = object.value ?? new Uint8Array();
    return message;
  }

where in this new world, we would have two types instead of one

  interface AnyFromPartial {
      typeUrl?: string;
      value?: Uint8Array;
  }

  interface Any {
      typeUrl: string;
      value: Uint8Array;
  }

@webmaster128 do you think there is something like this we can do that's more explicit and simplifies things for the typescript compiler?

[pyramation]

looks typescript is much much happier without Exact.

Our immediate issue can be solved similar to how this issue which was fixed by this PR