Nested parallel states from imported files aren't recognised by the type gen

[radiodario]

Hi there, Thanks a lot for XState.

I have quite a complex machine that contains parallel states in one of the compound state nodes.

The typegen works fine if all my parallel state definitions are in the same file, but if I extract the parallel states to separate files and I Import them, it fails to recognise them:

Separate files	Same File

Here's a link to a gist with a sample machine and its typegen output

Is this expected behaviour, or just a limitation of the typegen?

[Andarist]

It's a limitation, however - I would expect this situation to not load a machine at all. It's better to fail fast than to pretend that things are OK when we clearly failed to process the whole thing.

[dons20]

Is it possible that this limitation will be addressed in the future, or are there workarounds besides putting everything in one file?

[Andarist]

We'll be thinking if we should support those patterns or not. It definitely won't happen anytime soon. What kind of problems do you run into when you "put everything in one file"?

[dons20]

Mainly readability, usability and maintainability issues. I'm working with a fairly large and complex machine which has many actions, hierarchical and parallel nested states, function helpers, etc. Splitting it is definitely necessary for my team to be able to modify a specific section without getting too lost.

[Andarist]

Have you tried editing the machine visually with our VS Code extension? If yes - how did you find the experience in comparison to editing the files manually?

[dons20]

I haven't yet tried that functionality, so I will have to let you know how well it works for us. I'm in the process of upgrading the state machine on a project and integrating Typegen has been part of that process, though I have seen that it's limited when it comes to nested states extracted into separate files.