Manage package.json as package.coffee (in coffeescript)

Package.json is slightly annoying because you need to use perfect JSON syntax (like double quoting property names, no trailing commas)

Also I find coffeescript files easier to read because extra characters that don’t add meaningful information like braces can be dropped.

It would be much more convenient to manage the project with a package.coffee script that is transparently converted to package.json.

Hey Leftium,

We thought about doing this earlier on in HyperDev’s life but there were some reasons we didn’t at the time:

  1. we wanted to use a package file format that was interoperable with existing projects and what people are used to - even if it’s pretty clunky in this case.
  2. npm won’t ever natively support package.cson natively https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/2412
  3. cson/coffee files let you write actual code (not just document info) that would lead to some awkward error cases to figure out on our end.

Nicer handling of packages is something we’re investigating in other ways right now (like with the ‘add packages’ button). But we’ll revisit package.coffee/cson if the situation improves for npm.

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