Convert configs from .json to .js or .ts

[Alexander-Taran]

I'm submitting a discussion request

• Language:
  all

• Loader/bundler:
  all

Current behavior:

Config files are now mostly in .json format which does not allow comments.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/244777/can-comments-be-used-in-json

• What is the desired behavior?
  Have most config files in .js format
  Like webpack.config.js

module.exports = {
// same json, but now it can have comments along
}

• What is the motivation / use case for changing the behavior?

I think it would be useful to have commented config files.
It improves usage by new developers. And is generally a good practice.
Like in website usage - every additional step increases drop rate.
Figuring out what that line means and how to use it now requires..
If it's not mentioned in the docs -> hours of googling and parsing the issues
That is for the patient ones

Some drawbacks: I guess that now configs are read and modified as objects and are written the same way by the CLI.
Maintaining that ease of modifying config with CLI would be a challenge.

there is a jsonc parser by MS
https://github.com/Microsoft/node-jsonc-parser

but no writer of course..

Well It is a dream of improving something for newcomers
Not actionable

[JoakimSoderberg]

Similar to #781 (Yaml config)... Commented configs is a must.

The huge gap between the cli help and actually having to edit the config file without any help is a big usability gap.

[3cp]

I also want my aurelia.json to be upgraded to aureliarc.js, not only for comments (which I want too), but also for simplifying cli implementation. We can conditionally build the config, so we can cut off some code from cli that supports condition in aurelia.json, like:

{
  "name": "aurelia-testing",
  "env": "dev"
}

[michaelw85]

I would like to add a different motivation to prefer js over json config files. In my Aurelia setup I moved all my config files in an npm package (coding standards). JS files can easily extend another js/json config and be merged using a spread operator.

(Not a fan of adding comments btw, if you need to comment code it generally means something needs to be improved)

[3cp]

if you need to comment code it generally means something needs to be improved.

I think most coders will disagree 😃

[magnusdanielson]

Remeber that we are discussing add comments to configurations. I would say it is really valuable to have comments in configuration.

I would love to se .ts instead of .json

[Alexander-Taran]

bump