Object-level comments not rendered when referenced as properties

[ritz078]

TypeDoc fails to render TSDoc comments for local objects that are referenced as properties within exported objects.

/**
 * A test object with property a.
 */
const LocalObject = { 
  /**
   * A numeric value representing the first property.
   * @defaultValue 1
   */
  a: 1 
}

export const Options = { LocalObject } // LocalObject's documentation is lost

Search terms

property object, object, documentation lost

Expected Behavior

LocalObject should appear as a documented export with its TSDoc comment visible. The string A test object with property a. should be present in documentation.

Actual Behavior

LocalObject only appears as an undocumented nested property within Options. The documentation for properties of LocalObject is correctly present.

Steps to reproduce the bug

The above code should cause the issue. TypeDoc configuration

{
  "$schema": "https://typedoc.org/schema.json",
  "entryPoints": ["src/index.ts"],
  "out": "docs-typedoc",
  "excludePrivate": true,
  "excludeProtected": true,
  "excludeExternals": true,
  "theme": "default",
  "name": "API Extractor Example - TypeDoc",
  "includeVersion": true,
  "categorizeByGroup": true,
  "categoryOrder": ["Classes", "Interfaces", "Functions", "Types", "*"],
  "defaultCategory": "Other",
  "includeHierarchySummary": false,
  "disableSources": true,
  "customCss": "./custom-typedoc.css",
  "excludeInternal": true,
}

Environment

• Typedoc version: 0.28.10
• TypeScript version: 5.9.2
• Node.js version: 22.11.0
• OS: MacOS

[Gerrit0]

I debated marking this wontfix as it results in TypeDoc further diverging from TypeScript's comment discovery rules. TypeScript does not attach the variable's comment to the property's comment.

You can verify this by hovering over LocalObject in the Options assignment statement and verifying your doc comment does not show up there. There's probably an open issue in the TypeScript issue about showing these comments on hover, at which point TypeDoc would automatically pick them up.

I have a lot of difficulty finding issues in the TS repo, but my guess for the reason behind this is that symbol inheritance like this currently only happens for parent class methods/properties. Copying a symbol's comment to another symbol on assignment would be confusing:

/** doc */
const A = ...
const B = A; // gets A's docs?

In this specific instance with shorthand property assignment, it's probably reasonable to request that TypeScript do it too, so I've decided to implement it here for this specific case. It will not work if you do const Options = { LocalOptions: LocalOptions }