When using TypeScript 2, I get an inconsistent behavior for importing type definitions from @types when using tsc with an explicit tsconfig.json path versus not specifying one.

I have the following setup:

package.json

{
  "name": "typings-test",
  "devDependencies": {
    "@types/es6-shim": "*",
    "typescript": "^2.0.0"
  }
}

tsconfig.json

{}

test.ts

let x = new Set<string>();

After installing all dependencies with npm install, I call tsc once without arguments and once with -p .:

$ typings-test> tsc
$ typings-test> tsc -p .
test.ts(1,13): error TS2304: Cannot find name 'Set'.

As you can see, the latter fails because it cannot find a definition for Set. So the types that are located in node_modules/@types/es6-shim/index.d.ts are not loaded in this case.