unplugin-dts

unplugin-dts generates TypeScript declaration files (.d.ts) from .ts(x) and .vue source when building a library, and does it as a single plugin that works across Vite, Rollup, Rolldown, Webpack, Rspack, and esbuild via the unplugin abstraction. It’s the successor to vite-plugin-dts — the same author’s earlier, Vite-only plugin, whose README now explicitly tells users to switch to unplugin-dts — extending the same declaration-generation approach (with optional API Extractor-based type bundling) to every major bundler instead of being locked to Vite’s library mode.

Teams publishing a TypeScript library add it as a build plugin so consumers get accurate, source-following (or bundled) type declarations without a separate tsc --emitDeclarationOnly step wired into their build pipeline.

What You Get

• One plugin package with per-bundler entry points (unplugin-dts/vite, /rollup, /webpack, /rspack, /esbuild) sharing a common core
• Declaration generation that follows source file structure by default, for both .ts(x) and .vue files
• Optional type bundling into a single declaration file via Microsoft’s API Extractor (bundleTypes: true)
• Migration documentation from vite-plugin-dts v4/v5 for projects moving off the deprecated package
• Works alongside library-mode builds to emit types matching the built JS output

Common Use Cases

• Publishing a TypeScript library to npm with correct, versioned .d.ts files as part of the build
• Migrating an existing vite-plugin-dts-based build to a bundler-agnostic setup
• Generating declarations for a Vue component library alongside its compiled JS
• Bundling scattered per-file declarations into a single .d.ts entry point for cleaner published packages
• Switching a library’s build tool (e.g. Vite to Rspack) without switching declaration-generation plugins

Under The Hood

Architecture - Built on the unplugin framework, the package’s src/core holds bundler-agnostic declaration-generation logic, while thin per-bundler entry files (vite.ts, rollup.ts, webpack.ts, rspack.ts, esbuild.ts, rolldown.ts) adapt that core to each build tool’s plugin hook interface, so one implementation of TS-to-declaration generation is reused across six bundlers instead of being reimplemented per tool. Tech Stack - TypeScript, built with tsx/unbuild, using Microsoft’s @microsoft/api-extractor as an optional dependency for the type-bundling feature, and tested with Vitest across per-bundler playground projects (react-vite, vue-rspack, ts-webpack, etc.) in the monorepo. Code Quality - The monorepo enforces commitlint, ESLint, and Husky pre-commit hooks, has dedicated e2e playground projects per bundler for integration testing, and shows very active, well-maintained development (score 84 health, active commits as of the latest release); the core package itself has a comparatively small direct unit-test footprint, relying more on the playground/e2e projects for coverage. API Design - Sharing one dts() options object across bundler entry points (options.tsconfigPath, options.bundleTypes) keeps configuration familiar to anyone coming from vite-plugin-dts, and the explicit migration guide lowers switching cost; the tradeoff is that some options are bundler-specific under the hood even though the top-level API looks uniform, so edge cases can require reading the per-bundler docs.