v5: why does a custom directory require package.json?

[ericcornelissen]

The v5 documentation says you can install Husky into a custom directory with the install command by specifying a custom path. However, the source requires this custom directory to have a package.json file (see below), but that doesn't seem necessary to me. I did some manual testing (commenting out the snippet below in node_modules/husky) and installed into a subdirectory and as far as I can tell everything works fine (including running NPM scripts, but even if that wasn't possible I don't know why that must be supported), but maybe I'm missing something...

husky/src/commands/install.ts

Lines 32 to 34 in aaf1bee

	if (!fs.existsSync(path.join(absoluteHooksDir, 'package.json'))) {
	throw new Error("package.json can't be found")
	}

Relatedly, the first example in the "Custom directory" documentation suggests to me that I can install the hooks into a directory called .config instead of .husky, but the result of the example would be that the hooks are installed into .config/.husky. Not sure if that is just me reading it wrong or if it is a mistake in the documentation.

In any case, I would like to see the option to change the name of the .husky folder in addition to changing the directory, would you be open to such a feature @typicode? My initial suggestion for this would be to have a separate option+argument for that, e.g. husky install custom/dir -dirname .config.

[typicode]

The fact that the custom dir requires package.json is likely a bug I think.
Overall this part is a bit rough around the edges, I do plan to improve that this week.
Thanks for the feedback 👍

[typicode]

Should be good with v5.0.6, I've updated documentation.

[ericcornelissen]

Works as expected now, awesome 👍 Thank you very much!