List plugins inside plugin packs

[ben-eb]

It would be good to list plugins as parts of plugin packs. So for example cssnext uses postcss-selector-matches, and at least a handful of plugins use postcss-reporter. Would be great if those connections were realised in this list. 😄

Would be nice also to list some plugins that are not included, once this is done. We decided to remove most of cssnano's plugins (there are a lot now!) from the PostCSS readme on account of the optimisations section being too big.

[himynameisdave]

Yeah this is actually super cool! Looking to add this stuff as well!

Here's how I'm thinking I'm going to implement this:

1. Have a docs/packs.md file that displays each pack's dependant plugins.
2. Go research the plugins used by packs like cssnano and make sure they are added to the main list

@ben-eb Make sense?

[ben-eb]

You could also have a packs property for each plugin (array type) that would list the packs that the plugin belongs to. 😄

[himynameisdave]

That is so much smarter/better, and then if I really wanted to generate that packs.md it would be so much easier because that data would be available.

[ben-eb]

Alright, I'll send a patch for cssnano's plugins. 😄

[jonathantneal]

I would rather the packs identify which plugins they utilize. This might be inferable from package.json

[himynameisdave]

I like both of these ideas... so here's what I think is the most comprehensive:

{
  "name": "cool-plugin-pack",
  "tags": [
    "pack"
  ],
  "plugins_used": [
    "a-neat-plugin",
    "other-plugin"
  ]
},{
   "name": "a-neat-plugin",
   "tags": [
     "fun"
   ],
   "packs": [
      "cool-plugin-pack"
   ]
}

(obviously I left out some properties but you get the idea...)

[ben-eb]

We can get the other by code, surely?

[himynameisdave]

@ben-eb how do you mean? I see it being used as such:

require("postcss-plugins").forEach(function(plugin){
  if( plugin.tags.indexOf("pack") < 0 ){
    // this plugin is a pack
    // plugin.plugins_used exists and can be iterated through
  }else{
     if( plugin.packs ){
       // this plugin is part of a pack, and plugin.packs can be iterated through
     }else{
       // this plugin is not a pack or part of a pack
     }
  }
});

Should there just be like an isPack property instead so that initial check is easier?

[ben-eb]

I mean that you can infer the relationship between the pack & each of its plugins without needing two properties, whichever you choose.

[himynameisdave]

....but what do you think is the best course of action? Tell me, I wanna know - what would you do?

[ben-eb]

I already started using the packs property in the last pull request, so I would go with that. 😄

[jonathantneal]

Related to #13, might we use https://registry.npmjs.org/${ name }/latest to get the list of dependencies as dependencies? We could use this to report the number of dependencies or what those dependencies are, as well as detect when those dependencies are other PostCSS plugins.

[himynameisdave]

Well we kind of already have the packs property in the dataset, I'm not sure there is a ton of value in adding dependencies as well but maybe I'm wrong?