RFC: Adopt Prettier default config instead of eslint formatting rules

[shamilovtim]

• Start Date: 2023-11-07
• RFC PR:

Summary

Encourage open source contributions and move toward community standard tooling by adopting Prettier as a formatter. Remove ad-hoc formatting rules from the eslint config.

Motivation

Eslint says it will no longer function as a formatter. As a new contributor I forked web5-js and made some changes. I went to format but I noticed that no formatter was configured. This was surprising because as a regular OSS contributor I haven't encountered many recent JS projects that don't use Prettier.

Drawbacks

• Adding prettier adds a CI step to format all PRs
• Contributors will need to be onboarded toward using Prettier and formatOnSave

Alternatives

• There's dprint but for an open source project Prettier is standard

Adoption strategy

• Add a .prettierrc to the project root. Use default prettier settings and singlequote { singleQuote: true }.
• Remove eslint formatter rules
• Bump eslint and plugins
• Add a vscode workspace setting to use formatOnSave: true and selected formatter prettier
• Add vscode recommended extension for Prettier
• Add a CI step to check prettier formatting
• Don't use eslint-prettier because it causes editor noise