Possible to use different configs for different folders?

[borekb]

I have a project that looks like this:

• .markdownlintrc (root config, should apply to folders 1..3 below)
• folder-1
• folder-2
• folder-3
• folder-4
  • .markdownlintrc (special config for folder 4)

The nested folder-4/.markdownlintrc looks like this:

{
  "extends": "../.markdownlintrc",
  "MD041": false
}

Is there a way to run markdownlint CLI once and have it check all folders in my project – folder 1..3 with the root config and folder 4 with its own?

As a fallback, I plan to run markdownlint twice but wanted to ask first if there's a way to achieve that in one go.

[borekb]

BTW, I was wondering if the CLI could behave like a VSCode extension, which respects the closest config files. Maybe behind some flag to maintain backwards compatibility, for example:

markdownlint --ignore node_modules --use-closest-config-file .

I realize there might be performance implications of this.

[DavidAnson]

Agreed, the two tools should be consistent. Something like what you propose may be a good approach. For now, running two passes is probably what you want to do.

(As you suggest, the scenario is a little different here versus the extension; in the extension it pretty much only ever needs to worry about one file at a time and so spending a bit of effort to find files up the tree isn’t a problem. The CLI does everything at once, so this is more problematic. Specifically, it could turn one call to the library into tens or hundreds and that may create other issues.)

[borekb]

It's worth noting that in the context of lint-staged, markdownlint CLI also runs for a single file only.

At this point, I have to do this:

// .lingstagedrc.js

module.exports = {
  "{!(folder-4)/**/,}*.md": ["markdownlint"],
  "folder-4/**/*.md": ["markdownlint -c folder-4/.markdownlint.json"],
};

With the proposed behavior, this could be simplified to:

module.exports = {
  "**/*.md": ["markdownlint --use-closest-config-file"]
};

[DavidAnson]

@borekb: Per my comments at #45 (comment) you should be able to use markdownlint-cli2 for this scenario as it supports different .markdownlint.json files for each directory. If you try it, please let me know how it goes!

[borekb]

Looks very good, thanks! I won't be able to test this soon but will keep that in mind for future updates of our dev infra.

[borekb]

@DavidAnson cli2 works beautifully for this! Does VSCode extension already do this as well?

[DavidAnson]

@borekb Yes, the VS Code markdownlint extension respects the "closest" .markdownlint.json file in the current/parent directory of the project.