Use "Yaml", "Toml" or "JS" instead of "JSON" for Nx related files

Description

The basic idea, behind it is, JSON, is not suited for configuration files. Personally, I like Yaml, TOML, but JS is a very nice alternative as well. There are a number of guides that describe why JSON isn’t a very good candidate for configuration files, but here are the top issues for me:

• Too much noise, especially in long JSON Files, makes it hard to find the information you want.
• Cannot handle Long String and different types of Numbers properly.
• Lack of programmatic nature. Can be extremely useful for configuration files.

It is also, a step towards other projects allowing more than JSON for their configs. ESLint, and Prettier use all of the above options. It would be good if Nx allowed it as well.

[maxisam]

one big issue is we can’t use comments in JSON. There are workaround but I think we should move to yaml. I think yaml is the choice for configuration file now after k8s is getting popular.

[kenptr]

I also recommend https://jsonnet.org/, which adds tons of useful features to JSON: functions, imports, conditionals, etc.

It would allow creating helper functions, so the config like this:

  "project": {
    "servak": {
      "root": "apps/servak",
      "sourceRoot": "apps/servak/src",
      "projectType": "application",
      "prefix": "servak",
      "targets": {
        "build": {
          "executor": "@nrwl/node:build",
          "outputs": ["{options.outputPath}"],
          "options": {
            "outputPath": "dist/apps/servak",
            "main": "apps/servak/src/main.ts",
            "tsConfig": "apps/servak/tsconfig.app.json",
            "assets": ["apps/servak/src/assets", "apps/servak/src/views"],
            "webpackConfig": "tools/webpack/servak_config.js"
          },
          "configurations": {
            "production": {
              "optimization": true,
              "extractLicenses": true,
              "inspect": false,
              "fileReplacements": [
                {
                  "replace": "apps/servak/src/environments/environment.ts",
                  "with": "apps/servak/src/environments/environment.prod.ts"
                }
              ]
            }
          }
        },
        "serve": {
          "executor": "@nrwl/node:execute",
          "options": {
            "buildTarget": "servak:build",
            "waitUntilTargets": ["iibutton:build"]
          }
        },
        "lint": {
          "executor": "@nrwl/linter:eslint",
          "options": {
            "lintFilePatterns": ["apps/servak/**/*.ts"]
          }
        },
        "test": {
          "executor": "@nrwl/jest:jest",
          "outputs": ["coverage/apps/servak"],
          "options": {
            "jestConfig": "apps/servak/jest.config.js",
            "passWithNoTests": true
          }
        },
        "version": {
          "executor": "@jscutlery/semver:version",
          "options": {
            "syncVersions": false
          }
        }
      }
    }
}}

will become

local NodeProject(opts) = { ... }; // will contain default project configs as above

projects: {
  servak: NodeProject({
    name: "servak",
    target: {
      options: {
          webpackConfig: "tools/webpack/servak_config.js"
      }
    }
  })
}