jsLint weird assignment error when casting

Question

I use google-closure compiler and jsLint tool for my JS code. Because closure compiler looks at JSDoc tags I need to cast variable to proper type or otherwise compiler will throw errors. Code below works ok (no compiler warnings), but when I run jsLint I get 'Weird assignment' error. Is there any other way to cast variable.

/** @return {Town|Village|Park|Metropolis} */
var getCurrentItem = function() {...some code}

var item = getCurrentItem();

if (condition)
{
    item = /** @type {Town} */ (item);  // 'Weird assignment' error occurs

    drawTown(item);
    updateTown(item)
}
else
{
    item = /** @type {Village} */ (item);  // 'Weird assignment' error occurs

    drawVillage(item);
    updateVillage(item)
}

I want casting to be done in one line and not on every function that I need to call!

Answer 1

I'd like to provide you with a few thoughts;

1) From Writing Resilient Components/#marie-kondo-your-lint-config:

Here’s what I suggest you to do on Monday. Gather your team for half an hour, go through every lint rule enabled in your project’s config, and ask yourself: “Has this rule ever helped us catch a bug?” If not, turn it off.

2) Closure Compiler has no issue with your code.

3) Just cast twice if you must:

drawVillage(/** @type {Village} */ (item));
updateVillage(/** @type {Village} */ (item));

4) If you're really quite concerned about avoiding repeating yourself, you can create a function that does the casting for you;

/** 
 * @param {Town|Village|Park|Metropolis} p
 * @return {boolean|Village}
 */
var getVillage = function(p) {
  if (p.somethingVillageSpecific) {
    return /** @type {Village} */ (p);
  } else {
    return false;
  } 
}

5) Lint with ES-lint + jsdocs-plugin.