Preserve existing indentation in package.json

[gilmoreorless]

Using vsce publish <version> is clobbering the existing indentation in package.json and forcing it to always be 4 spaces. This differs from the default 2-space indentation generated by npm init, and can make git diffs rather messy.

I know npm has code to detect the indentation of package.json and preserve it when installing/updating/removing dependencies or publishing a new version. Ideally vsce would do the same.

I’ve been able to quickly get the same functionality working for vsce locally (using the same module as npm for consistency). I’d be happy to create a PR for it, but I also saw in #180 that vsce might be moving away from custom package.json updates completely. So before I clean up the code and write tests for it, is this a PR that’s worth doing, or should I just wait until vsce uses npm publish under the covers?

[joaomoreno]

I'm more in favour of having vsce just spawn npm.

[gilmoreorless]

Fair enough, I’ll leave it alone then. 😃

[JimiC]

@joaomoreno So how to think this should be implemented? Using npm unofficial API or spawning a child process and executing the npm command?

[JimiC]

Looking at the code I concluded that child process is preferred.