Invoking ESLint via Node API Uses Seemingly Incorrect Path for Configs and Plugins

Tell us about your environment

• ESLint Version: 3.11.1
• Node Version: 7.2
• npm Version: 3.10.9

What parser (default, Babel-ESLint, etc.) are you using? default

Please show your full configuration:

{
  "extends": "@example/eslint-config-example
}

What did you do? Please include the actual source code causing the issue.

const cliEngine = new CLIEngine({
    useEslintrc: true,
    cwd: process.cwd()
});
const report = cliEngine.executeOnFiles(files);

What did you expect to happen? I have a utility that is globally installed and invoked via the command line. It has a dependency on eslint, but should execute the rules and plugins specified in the cwd’s .eslintrc. That mostly seems to work, but when it attempts to process the extends, the path received from getBaseDir seems incorrect. In particular, it tries to search relative to the eslint in the globally installed tool rather than relative to the .eslintrc, which means that it misses the dependencies installed by the project.

Basically, the dependencies I’ve got are:

SomeProject:
    devDependencies:
        eslint-config-mine:
            dependencies:
                eslint-config-otherTeam,
                eslint-plugin-mine,
MyTool:
    dependencies:
        eslint

What actually happened? Please include the actual, raw output from ESLint.

/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/config/config-file.js:402
            throw e;
            ^

Error: Cannot find module 'eslint-config-mine'
Referenced from: /Users/wstamper/github/someproject/.eslintrc.json
    at ModuleResolver.resolve (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/util/module-resolver.js:74:19)
    at resolve (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/config/config-file.js:479:33)
    at load (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/config/config-file.js:496:26)
    at configExtends.reduceRight (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/config/config-file.js:392:36)
    at Array.reduceRight (native)
    at applyExtends (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/config/config-file.js:363:28)
    at Object.load (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/config/config-file.js:530:22)
    at loadConfig (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/config.js:63:33)
    at getLocalConfig (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/config.js:130:29)
    at Config.getConfig (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/config.js:256:22)
    at processText (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/cli-engine.js:224:33)
    at processFile (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/cli-engine.js:303:18)
    at executeOnFile (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/cli-engine.js:672:25)
    at fileList.forEach.fileInfo (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/cli-engine.js:710:13)
    at Array.forEach (native)
    at CLIEngine.executeOnFiles (/Users/wstamper/mytool/node_modules/eslint/lib/cli-engine.js:709:18)

[jonathantneal]

The issue may be in lib/config/config-file.js#L312-L315:

function getBaseDir(configFilePath) {

    // calculates the path of the project including ESLint as dependency
    const projectPath = path.resolve(__dirname, "../../../");

The projectPath that gets calculated here does not seem to be “the path of the project including eslint as a dependency”, but is actually the project’s node_modules directory.

We can break this down. So, the __dirname will be:

PROJECT/node_modules/eslint/lib/config

Which means "../../../" will take us…

PROJECT/node_modules/eslint/lib
PROJECT/node_modules/eslint
PROJECT/node_modules

I will make a PR to strip lingering node_modules directories. Doing so resolves the issue for me.

[jonathantneal]

• ESLint Version: 3.12.0
• Node Version: 7.2.0
• npm Version: 4.0.3

I’ve been running into this issue as well. Example:

const cli = new CLIEngine({
  cwd: path.resolve(dir)
});

Within the resolved dir directory, a package.json file is successfully read. Example:

{
  "eslintConfig": {
    "extends": "dev"
  }
}

However, eslint does not resolve the eslint-config-dev module relative to the cwd / package.json, despite that being how it identified the configuration to begin with. Rather, it attempts to resolve the dev configuration from the actual current working directory.