Possible Unintended Side Effects of: always look at .config.{yml,yaml,json,js,cjs}

[Jason3S]

8.1.0

• Added: always look at .config.{yml,yaml,json,js,cjs} file to configure cosmiconfig itself, and look for tool configuration in it using packageProp (similar to package.json)
• For more info on this, look at the end user configuration section of the README

Is there a way to turn this off? I'm hunting down a crashing issue streetsidesoftware/vscode-spell-checker#2583 that is most likely caused by a user's .config.* changing the .json parser.

[d-fischer]

You can explicitly not overwrite loaders in that config file (as of now):

cosmiconfig/src/index.ts

Lines 125 to 127 in dacce13

	if (config.loaders) {
	throw new Error('Can not specify loaders in meta config file');
	}

But if it were possible, it would be the user's own fault, to be honest.

This might be a bug relating to the loading though. Will investigate as soon as your user has answered your question in your issue so I have a proper lead on this.

[Jason3S]

@d-fischer,

He has confirmed that there is a .config.js: streetsidesoftware/vscode-spell-checker#2583 (comment)

The issue is right there in the code, options is lost if there is a metaConfig:

cosmiconfig/src/index.ts

Lines 119 to 138 in dacce13

	if (!metaConfig) {
	return normalizeOptions(moduleName, options);
	}
	const config = metaConfig.config ?? {};
	if (config.loaders) {
	throw new Error('Can not specify loaders in meta config file');
	}
	if (config.searchPlaces) {
	config.searchPlaces = replaceMetaPlaceholders(
	config.searchPlaces,
	moduleName,
	);
	}
	config.metaConfigFilePath = metaConfig.filepath;
	return normalizeOptions(moduleName, config, false);

[d-fischer]

Welp, that's obviously a mistake, it should merge with the original config. Will fix ASAP. Thanks for your investigation.

[Jason3S]

@d-fischer,

Does it make sense to "merger" the searchPlaces instead of replacing them? I can understand if a User wants to add their preferred places, but replacing the ones specified by the cli-tool can easily cause things to break.

For example, cspell has multiple places for a configuration file. It has a defined search pattern. Sub folders and parent folders might both have config files. If the .config.js at the root is there to clean up the root, it would mess up the sub folders.

Case in point, if someone adds a .config.js to adjust the location of prettier, they could break cspell or eslint because a "single" config is applied to ALL tools that use Cosmiconfig.

[d-fischer]

The idea of this "meta config" concept was always to put the end user in a position of power over where their config is. I can maybe see some way to notify the user via a console warning when an empty configuration is returned while a searchPlaces override is in place. This would probably include a way to silence said warning, too.

I don't like the idea of merging the places by default. Maybe there could be an option to enable merging? Maybe even just for specified libraries? I don't know what would be best yet, but these ideas should probably be refined within a separate issue.

[d-fischer]

Fixed in 8.1.1. Again, thanks for your efforts!

[Jason3S]

@d-fischer,

Thank you for fixing it.