Resolve the configuration file path in the commonjs style

The version of ESLint you are using.

4.19.1

The problem you want to solve.

Assume that I have an eslint configuration file whose path is <ProjectRoot>/path/to/eslint-configuration/index.js, and I want to use it as the following way:

In package.json:

"eslintConfig": {
    "extends": "./path/to/eslint-configuration"
  }

Eslint can’t read the configuration file path and throws an error (I have simplified the paths in the error message):

Cannot read config file: /absolute/xx/<ProjectRoot>/path/to/eslint-configuration Error: EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, read Referenced from: /absolute/xx/<ProjectRoot>/package.json

When I first want to target the eslint configuration to a file is relative to my project, my initial intuition was writing it in the commonjs way. I hope that eslint would resolve ./path/to/eslint-configuration to /absolute/xx/<ProjectRoot>/path/to/eslint-configuration/index.js. But it will not actually.

It’s counterintuitive that the path needed by node application could not be resolved in the “node” way. I know I can write down the full path of which file I want to target, but there is a better way to solve it.

Your take on the correct solution to problem.

As the current strategy of how eslint resolves the configuration file is the following: https://github.com/eslint/eslint/blob/master/lib/config/config-file.js#L453-L484

So I read the source codes about how eslint resolves configuration file path. I found that the strategy is complicated due to prefixes like eslint-config- and eslint-plugin-. But what I want is still feasible, because abbreviated config / plugin package name is different with absolute path. Resolve the absolute path by require.resolve() is feasible and has no impact on other places.

All I need to do is wrapping the fullPath with require.resolve():

https://github.com/eslint/eslint/blob/master/lib/config/config-file.js#L457

@not-an-aardvark

[not-an-aardvark]

Thanks for creating an issue, I think I understand the motivation now.

I have a few concerns about making this change:

• Unlike Node, ESLint also loads YAML files for configs. It seems like it could be confusing if ./path/to/eslint-configuration works when the config is located at ./path/to/eslint-configuration/index.js, but fails when the config is located at ./path/to/eslint-configuration/index.yml.
• This would limit our flexibility to change how configs are resolved in the future, e.g. if we want to treat relative paths differently somehow in a way that would be incompatible with how Node loads files.

Overall, since the benefit of this change seems fairly minor (it just saves a few keystrokes for the one-time use case of creating a config file), I’m leaning against wanting to add it. However, I’m not strongly opposed, if there are other team members who think this would be a worthwhile change.

[platinumazure]

Closing as there doesn’t seem to be interest in pursuing this at this time. Thanks!