ts-import-plugin | babel-import-plugin TypeScript Implement | Plugin library

The TypeScript compiler has four main phases—parsing, binding, type checking, and emitting. Binding is where the relationships between identifiers are resolved, but transformation happens during the "emitting" phase. So by the time you're transforming it's too late and the compiler has already figured out what identifiers it's going to transform.

One way to do what you want to do, is to traverse all the nodes in the file, find the identifiers that match one of the ones in your import, then recreate those identifiers by returning context.factory.createIdentifier(node.escapedText) in the visitor for that node. That will make the compiler leave the node as-is when emitting.

The trouble though may be figuring out which identifiers in a file reference the named import identifier. Generally I don't recommend using the type checker in transforms because it can lead to unexpected results when there are multiple transformations happening on a file, but you might be able to get away with first checking if the identifier's escapeText matches, then checking if typeChecker.getSymbolAtLocation(node)?.declarations[0] equals the named export identifier found in the original import declaration. Alternatively, I think you would have to implement your own scope analysis.

Add these line to your eslintrc.js file under rules: