import/no-unused-modules breaks --no-eslintrc and eslint fails

[kkmuffme]

When using import/no-unused-modules with unusedExports: true, it will overwrite CLI --no-eslintrc and start looking for eslint config files - and if it finds none (because they are in a different path and provided with --config) eslint will fail.
(originally though it's an eslint bug, see eslint/eslint#17682)

ESLint couldn't find a configuration file. To set up a configuration file for this project, please run:

Additionally (not tested) this might also mean that in this case eslint will start to use eslintrc files or data from package.json it shouldn't use, since the flag is set.

[pnodet]

Running into this issue as well

[ljharb]

The problem makes sense to me; unfortunately I'm not aware of any way eslint lets us know that those flags were used.