"extends" in .remarkrc

[kachkaev]

Hey guys,

I discovered remark after having some experience with eslint and I quite like the fact that these two tools share some ideas. Because of the resulting similarity, I expected to see one feature in remark, but I could not find it. It is about .remarkrc inheritance.

In eslint people often rely on some shared config, such as one by airbnb. It is possible create your own base config on top of something common and use it in all new projects:

cd new-project
npm install --save eslint-config-my-super-rules

new-project/.eslintrc:

{
  "extends": "my-super-rules"
}

When a team decides to follow a new .eslint rule, someone just updates eslint-config-my-super-rules (a central node module) and then others just npm update inside the dependent projects. This way it is much easier to stay organized in a team because no eslint rules are project-specific.

The same approach could be used with remark linter (or other remark plugins):

cd new-project
npm install --save remark-config-my-super-rules

new-project/.remarkrc:

{
  "extends": "my-super-rules"
}

When all remark-linter rules are shared across multiple projects, there is less debate on how *.md should look like in each individual case. If a team is not happy with the current state of things, a rule is added or removed in a single source of truth for remark and everyone is happy again.

How feasible would be to add something like this to remark?

[wooorm]

Coool! I like this idea, and I definitely see it included in the future.

Now, ESLint is a linter, whereas remark is more like esprima, acorn, or others. With that in mind, do you see the whole .remarkrc extend other configs?

{
  "extends": "my-super-rules",
  "output": true
}

Or, just the plugins:

{
  "plugins": {
      "extends": "my-super-rules",
  },
  "output": true
}

Or, just remark-lint:

{
  "plugins": {
    "lint": {
      "extends": "my-super-rules"
    }
  },
  "output": true
}

Note that something like this already works, by using --config-path ./node_modules/my-super-rules/index.js, but that’s not very nice of course.

[kachkaev]

Hey @wooorm, glad that you like the suggestion!

I haven't been using remark for anything but linting so far, so I'm afraid it's difficult for me to recommend what sort of inheritance would be better. Thanks for the --config-path tip!

There's probably one more thing one can do in the meantime: to simply make my-project/.remarkrc a symlink to my-project/node_modules/remark-config-my-super-rules/.remarkrc. A symlink will perfectly fit into a git repo, so a cloned working copy should work right away after git clone and npm install (unless you are on Windows). Looks like a solution with a symlink will suit me for now, because I'm not planning to introduce any additional project-specific rules and because Atom's linter for markdown files will be able to understand me.

[alexander-akait]

@wooorm I think it would be cool to be able extend in all levels (config, plugins, setting - rules for plugins)

[wooorm]

Small update: I’ve decided to go with presets instead, similar to how Babel presets work.

Here’s an example using presets:

{
  "presets": [
    "lint-recommended" // remark-preset-lint-recommended
  ],
  // completely optional overwriting of options:
  "plugins": {
    "lint": {
      "bullet": "*"
    }
  }
}

Where remark-preset-lint-recommended could look as follows:

{
  "plugins": {
    "lint": {
      "finalNewline": true,
     // ...
    }
  }
}

If the user installed remark-lint, it’ll use that, otherwise the one in the preset is used!

Thus, they’re basically sharable configs, but the mental model of Babel fits better than ESLint.

For now I’m writing some tests and stuff. Hope to do a proper release this/next week.

[wooorm]

Locking and hiding to keep the discussion clean.
You are responding on a 6 year old, solved, issue. See my last comment, and the commit that closed this, for the answer “has this been implemented”.
This has since changed a bit. Presets can be passed everywhere just like plugins can.
For the latest on presets, see the API docs: https://github.com/unifiedjs/unified#preset.