Have you ever dreamed about this?

What?

All the files (you have chosen) are hidden away within the .config folder. This process is made in all packages within a monorepo.

Why?

The JavaScript / TypeScript ecosystem is very large - for good and for bad. This means that we will always have a lot of configuration files. I often find myself getting distracted by the amount of configuration files. This along with the fact that I love structure, led me to create this tool.

How?

1. We find all the packages and items that are considered configuration (this is configurable but with good defaults).
2. We symlink them all into the .config folder (which is also configurable).
3. We hide all items by manipulating the .vscode/settings.json file.
4. If you don't use vscode (or it's decendents), there is a custom hook in the configuration file so you can configure your own IDE.

Getting started

npx hidden-hell --init

This command will create a .hide.js file in the root of your project with some default configuration. This will lead to hiding all folders starting with a dot as well as all the root files. If you are using a monorepo, this will happen for all packages.

Usage

(If you have hidden-hell installed, you can also use the hide command as an alias.)

npx hidden-hell

Options:
  (-i | --init)                     # Initialize the configuration
  (-l | --link-folder-name)  name   # The name of the folder that will contain the symlinks
  (-r | --reset)                    # Reset the configuration
  (-s | --show)                     # Show all files without removing the symlinks

Configuration

The configuration file is a JavaScript file that exports an object with the following interface:

The configuration can be defined in either the package.json or in the .hide.js/hide.js/hidden-heaven.js file. Both of them adheres to the interface above. However, the callbacks obviously cannot be used in the package.json.

Click to expand configuration interface

interface InputConfig {
    /**
     * How to find all the packages we want to run within. Uses glob patterns.
     */
    find?: {
        /**
         * The folders of where to run hidden-heaven within.
         * If the found item is a file, we'll use it's parent.
         * Defaults to finding all "package.json" files except for node_modules
         */
        packages?: FindConfig;

        /**
         * The files within the packages that will be hidden.
         * Defaults to ["*"]
         */
        items?: FindConfig;
    };

    /**
     * The name of the link folder we want all symlinks to be written to.
     * Defaults to .config
     */
    linkFolderName?: string;

    /**
     * If we should hide the target files in vscode
     * Defaults to true
     */
    vscode?: boolean;

    /**
     * The format config
     */
    format?: {
        /**
         * What JS runtime command should we use to execute the formatters? npm? pnpm? yarn? bun?
         * Defaults to npm
         */
        runtime?: string;

        /**
         * Whether to try to run prettier fix on the file
         * Defaults to true
         */
        prettier?: boolean;

        /**
         * Whether to try to run eslint fix on the file
         * Defaults to true
         */
        eslint?: boolean;
    };

    /**
     * A callback for each source item that is found in the source folder.
     * This can be used e.g. to write a custom .gitignore, .vscode, or other config files.
     */
    onItem?(config: OnItemConfig): any;

    /**
     * A callback for all the items found, The items are flattened.
     * This can also be used to write a custom .gitignore, .vscode, or other config files.
     */
    onItems?(config: OnItemsConfig): any;
}

Check the Source code (InputConfig) for more information.

Limitations

• Windows is not yet supported, will add on demand.
• Items are ignored and hidden on root level.
  • If you want to hide them at a specific position or level, you need to write a custom hook.

TODO

• Make init just init the config file
• Battle test sync
• Add workflow instructions
  • If a file in the config file is not a symlink, we should move it to the root and then run the sync.
    • This allows for a better workflow.

Roadmap

• Better docs
• Add linting
• Add different ways of determining included files
  • Regex object
  • JS-function (in config-file)
• Write to user settings in order to overwrite the hidings.
  • Add local ignored file to fix this? .hide.local.js?