Why are does eslint-config-react-app have "no" dependencies

[goleary]

What is the reason this lib doesn't install all of it's dependencies?

in the readme this is listed as the install command:

npm install --save-dev eslint-config-react-app @typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin@2.x @typescript-eslint/parser@2.x babel-eslint@10.x eslint@6.x eslint-plugin-flowtype@4.x eslint-plugin-import@2.x eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y@6.x eslint-plugin-react@7.x eslint-plugin-react-hooks@2.x

I glossed over the readme and figured that I could use the plugin by running yarn add eslint-config-react-app, but I had to do multiple rounds trips of installing additional packages after encountering errors.

You could say I should've done a better job of reading the readme before trying to use the package, but why require users to copy and paste this huge command instead of relying on the package manager to install these dependencies?

Isn't this one of the benefits of package managers? that the manage and install the dependencies of libraries needed by a package?

[brunogonzales]

I believe eslint-config-react-app is just a configuration module. It still needs the parsers and plugins to work properly so you need to install them separately.

[goleary]

@brunogonzales yeah i guess my question is: if it needs these parsers and plugins to work properly why are they not dependencies (and listed as such in it's package.json for npm to pick up)?

Perhaps there is some valid reason behind this, I'm just genuinely curious what it is. Would love to get pointed towards some reading that explains why this is better than my suggestion.

[mrmckeb]

There are limitations around this in ESLint today, which they're looking to address. It might be addressed as a part of eslint/rfcs#9.

Currently, ESLint recommends to place dependencies in peerDependencies:
https://eslint.org/docs/developer-guide/shareable-configs#publishing-a-shareable-config

You can see that the Airbnb config does the same:
https://github.com/airbnb/javascript/tree/master/packages/eslint-config-airbnb

PS: I hope it's OK that I converted this to a discussion - we want to try using this a lot more now that it's enabled :)

[goleary]

Yeah, happy for it to be a discussion, seems like a perfect use case :)

Thanks for the links, seems as though this problem is not specific to eslint-config-react-app, so it doesn't need to remain as an issue here.

Wow there's a lot to parse in that eslint rfc, I guess I'll cross my fingers and hope that the process of adding configs is simplified in the future (although many people seem to be concerned the updates will make configuring eslint less user friendly).

Thanks again for the pointers!