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Angular's ngp Moves Compiler Analysis to Rust: a Ninja Squad Benchmark Reports 2x to 3x Faster Cold Builds While Angular's README Calls It a Prototype

InfoQ reports Angular's ngp preprocessor does its analysis in Rust on Oxc; a Ninja Squad benchmark measured 2x to 3x faster cold builds, while Angular's README calls ngp an early-stage prototype.

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Overview

InfoQ reported on November 11 that the Angular Preprocessor (ngp), which it describes as a new version of the Angular team’s compiler, “rewrites the analysis stage of the toolchain in Rust to clear the way for TypeScript 7 adoption.” The same article relays two outside benchmarks, one of which measured a 2x to 3x speedup on cold builds. The README in Angular’s repository, however, calls the code “an early-stage prototype” and says the team is not accepting external issues or pull requests for it. This article sets out what the sources say, in date order, and where they differ.

Why a new compiler path

According to InfoQ, Angular’s existing compiler, ngc, wraps tsc and uses the Transformer API to turn decorators such as @Component and @Pipe into runtime instructions, and the Go port of TypeScript “offers no cross-language equivalent” of it. InfoQ also wrote that the Go-based rewrite “removed the ts.Transformer API that Angular’s ahead-of-time compiler depends on.” Microsoft’s TypeScript 7.0 announcement puts it differently: “While TypeScript 7.0 is here, it does not ship with an API.” The same post says that “specialized type-checking within templates like Angular will also likely not use TypeScript 7,” and that Angular projects can combine TypeScript 7 for project-wide error detection at the command line with TypeScript 6.0 for editor support.

Angular’s roadmap page says the team will “deliver an Angular compiler that is compatible with tsgo.” InfoQ reports that the team decided to decouple compilation from TypeScript’s APIs and rebuild it on Oxc, the VoidZero Rust toolchain.

How ngp is built

InfoQ describes three stages. A Rust frontend using Oxc analyses files in parallel to discover Angular declarations and resolve metadata. The existing TypeScript template compiler then emits two artefacts, a runtime file and a .ngtypecheck.ts file holding the Type Check Block for template type-checking. A downstream tool then handles type-checking and JavaScript emission; InfoQ names tsgo, tsrs, esbuild and Rolldown. The repository README gives a shorter description: it combines Rust-based AST analysis using oxc with a TypeScript-based typechecking coordination layer.

Timeline

Times are UTC. Release times are GitHub’s publication timestamps.

  • July 8, 2026: Microsoft publishes the TypeScript 7.0 announcement, per the post’s metadata.
  • Late September: InfoQ says the Angular team announced the work on its blog.
  • October 8: The bulk of ngp lands in one commit whose message says it integrates “the hybrid Angular preprocessor (NGP).” The committer timestamp is 21:23 on October 8; the author timestamp is 21:37 on October 7. GitHub’s statistics for the commit list 372,603 additions and 18 deletions. InfoQ describes it as a single commit of more than 370,000 lines, around 56,000 of them Rust.
  • October 14: Angular 22.3.0-next.2, marked a pre-release, is published at 23:30. In the Herald’s review of the release notes for 22.3.0-next.0 through next.4, it is the first whose note rows contain the word “preprocessor.” By the Herald’s own count of note rows whose description contains the word “preprocessor,” next.2 has 11, next.3 (October 29) has 23 and next.4 (November 5) has 5.
  • October 20: Microsoft announces the TypeScript 7.1 beta, saying it “ships a new API,” with a release candidate due “in about a month from now.” The Herald reported on that beta at the time.
  • November 11: InfoQ publishes its report.

Reported performance

Both sets of figures below come from outside developers, as relayed by InfoQ. They are not Angular-team figures, and the plugin used for the second set is pinned to 22.3.0-next.2, a pre-release.

According to InfoQ, Cédric Exbrayat of Ninja Squad benchmarked the beta against three projects ranging from 15 to 1,714 components and measured a 2x to 3x speedup on cold builds, with memory use on the largest project falling from 2.8 GB to 1.4 GB. InfoQ adds that pairing ngp with tsrs and Rolldown gave the fastest pipeline, with tsgo and esbuild only marginally slower. InfoQ’s summary does not name the baseline for the 2x to 3x figure.

InfoQ also reports that Christopher Holder at push-based.io wrote vite-plugin-ngp, which compiles Angular files on demand. On the Super Productivity codebase (252 components), InfoQ says, the dev server reached the first page in 10.5 seconds against 17.4 for ng serve, with template edits applying in 112 milliseconds rather than a 2.6 second full reload. On a generated 5,000-component app, InfoQ adds, the gap widened to 1.6 seconds against 28.4. Holder cautioned that the plugin “is a prototype on a prototype” pinned to 22.3.0-next.2.

Beta, prototype or pre-release

The sources use different labels. InfoQ’s headline says the compiler “Enters Beta,” and its text says Exbrayat benchmarked “the beta.” The Angular repository’s README carries a caution titled “Prototype — External Contributions Not Accepted” and says the team is “not accepting issues, bug reports, feature requests, or pull requests” for the package from external contributors “at this time.” The 22.3.0 builds that carry ngp changes are marked as pre-releases on GitHub. None of these sources reconciles the labels.

On timing, InfoQ says adoption of ngp “is expected to land in a minor release of Angular 22 once TypeScript 7.1 restores the compiler API,” and that until then production builds should stay on ngc. Microsoft’s July post said it expected 7.1 “to ship with a new (and different) API,” and the 7.1 beta post describes “a new API.” None of the Angular-side sources cited here (the README, the release notes, the commit and the roadmap page) states a planned stable release for ngp.

VoidZero’s Oxc Angular compiler, which InfoQ also mentions, carries a README warning: “This project is in an experimental stage and is actively seeking maintainers.”

What We Don’t Know

None of the sources cited here reports a benchmark published by the Angular team. The baseline for the 2x to 3x figure is not stated in InfoQ’s summary. The plugin benchmark is pinned to 22.3.0-next.2, and the later pre-releases next.3 and next.4 together have 28 more note rows containing the word “preprocessor” (the Herald’s count), so the pre-release code has kept changing since next.2. Which release, if any, will make ngp Angular’s compiler is not stated in the Angular-side sources cited here.