Conflict with Biome formatter: array formatting in `package.json` creates persistent diffs

[yoriiis]

Hi,

I'm running into a formatting conflict when using sort-package-json alongside Biome, a formatter/linter/diagnostics tool similar to Prettier. I'm not sure which tool is responsible for resolving this, so I'm also opening a discussion in the other repo to gather insight (see biomejs/biome#5807).

Both tools work on package.json, but they apply different formatting rules to array values (e.g. workspaces).

---

What's happening

1. sort-package-json rewrites package.json like this:

   "workspaces": [
     "./packages/*"
   ]

2. Then, Biome formats it back to:

   "workspaces": ["./packages/*"]

This results in an infinite diff loop when both tools are run in CI or locally with VS Code formatOnSave. Each tool undoes what the other did.

Repro repo:
👉 https://github.com/yoriiis/package-json-sort

The project has the npm run sort:packagejson and npm run biomd:check scripts (and VS Code workspace for the format on save).

---

Not sure where the fix should come from

Maybe:

• sort-package-json could expose a config option to preserve original formatting or allow single-line arrays?
• Or maybe it could detect and respect Biome's formatting when rewriting the file?
• Or perhaps Biome should be the sole tool used for formatting + sorting?

Any insight or recommendation would be appreciated — thanks for maintaining this great tool!

[keithamus]

This is a similar issue to #355 - multiple formatting tools run into conflict.

I think in general you should use one formatting tool. I don't think we can reasonably expect to be compatible with all formatting tools, as they might run into conflict with eachother.

Having said that I am open to adding heuristics for contracting small arrays into a single line. PRs welcome to resolve that precise issue.

[yoriiis]

Thanks @keithamus for the quick reply.

FYI, I've also received feedback on biomejs/biome#5807 (reply in thread) with the Biome team and modifying the Biome config solves my problem.

biome.json

{
	"overrides": [
		{
			"include": [
				"package.json"
			],
			"formatter": {
				"lineWidth": 1
			}
		}
	]
}

I don't really know if anything should be done here.

---

Out of curiosity, I tried to declare a workspace using the NPM CLI to see the change made to the package.json file and it was the same result as with this plugin.

npm init -w ./packages/a

{
	"workspaces": [
		"packages/a"
	]
}