Maintain src/ folder structure when building to dist/ folder with Typescript 3

I had a similar problem when initially converting to a TypeScript project. I also set resolveJsonModule: true and the src directory was copied to the output dist directory.

The underlying reason is that one of my source files required package.json at the root of the project. Once I removed that, tsc no longer added src to the dist directory.

In short, make sure you are not requiring files outside of your src directory.

Explanatory FAQ here: https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/FAQ#why-does---outdir-moves-output-after-adding-a-new-file

The structure of the output directory is controlled by the rootDir of the compilerOptions. See documentation here, setting it to ./src should solve the issue.

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "rootDir": "src",
    ...
  },
  "include": [
    "src/"
  ]
}