local plugins

[boneskull]

This ticket references an "open issue" mentioned in #1106.

Since #1386 was closed, if you:

• Want to write a plugin or rule, and
• Don't want to publish it to NPM, and
• Are using eslint in a non-CLI context, then
• Your tool/IDE must explicitly support the --rulesdir CLI option, or
• You are SOL.

Which happens to be the situation I'm in right now. 😄

I'm using ESLint from a JetBrains IDE (which provides ESLint errors/warnings in context), and it simply reads a specific config file--it has no options for flags. I imagine this is the case in many other tools as well.

I want to write a custom plugin, but don't want to bother with publishing to NPM. I wanted to bang something out, but since I can't specify a rulesdir from my config file, I don't think I have any recourse.

[lo1tuma]

You can install your local plugin with npm and without publishing it to the public registry:

npm install /local-path/to/your/custom-plugin

npm link would work too.

[boneskull]

@lo1tuma So I'd have to do something like have project dir "foo" and "foo/my-plugin" then "npm --save-dev my-plugin" from "foo"?? Does npm allow that? Seems pretty weird, if not bad/evil.

@nzakas I don't see what the resistance is to making this a bit easier for users, unless it's difficult to implement or would be a maintenance burden. Plugins are cool and all, but unless you can give your config a path to a plugin (not just a module name) it makes them a bit awkward for specific requirements.

[lo1tuma]

@boneskull You have to run npm install ./my-plugin from foo/. Local paths within your package.json works since npm v2.0.0.

[nzakas]

I think it's reasonable to limit the number of ways to do the same thing. --rulesdir was a quick hack to get runtime rules support until we got plugins.

There's already a way to load local plugins, so it appears your use case is already solved.

[boneskull]

Well, if you can npm install a subdirectory, then I'll do that.