esbuild-preserve-whitespace

An esbuild plugin that preserves blank lines and whitespace during TypeScript transpilation by temporarily marking them with special comments that esbuild preserves.

Installation

npm install -D esbuild-preserve-whitespace

yarn add -D esbuild-preserve-whitespace

pnpm add -D esbuild-preserve-whitespace

bun add -D esbuild-preserve-whitespace

Usage

Add the plugin to your esbuild configuration. Important: You must set legalComments: "inline" in your esbuild options for this plugin to work.

Basic Usage

import { esbuildPreserveWhitespacePlugin } from "esbuild-preserve-whitespace";

await esbuild.build({
  // ... other esbuild options ...
  legalComments: "inline", // Required!
  plugins: [esbuildPreserveWhitespacePlugin()],
});

With Options

import { esbuildPreserveWhitespacePlugin } from "esbuild-preserve-whitespace";

await esbuild.build({
  // ... other esbuild options ...
  legalComments: "inline",
  plugins: [
    esbuildPreserveWhitespacePlugin({
      verbose: true, // Enable verbose logging
    }),
  ],
});

Options

| Option | Type | Default | Description | |---------|-----------|---------|------------------------------| | verbose | boolean | false | Enable verbose build logging |

How It Works

1. Before build: Scans TypeScript files and temporarily replaces blank lines with special marker comments (//! _BLANK_LINE_)
2. During build: esbuild processes the files, preserving the marker comments since legalComments: "inline" is set
3. After build: Removes marker comments from output files and restores original source files

This approach ensures that blank lines are preserved in the final JavaScript output while maintaining clean source files.

Requirements

• legalComments: "inline" must be set in your esbuild configuration