Questions on probe vs validate

[MarvinXu]

I'm learning eslint and settings in vscode. As I try to understand what files does vscode-eslint validate, I came across these two settings which made me confused.

eslint.probe - an array for language identifiers for which the ESLint extension should be activated and should try to validate the file. If validation fails for probed languages the extension says silent. Defaults to ["javascript", "javascriptreact", "typescript", "typescriptreact", "html", "vue", "markdown"].

eslint.validate - an array of language identifiers specifying the files for which validation is to be enforced. This is an old legacy setting and should in normal cases not be necessary anymore. Defaults to ["javascript", "javascriptreact"].

From what I understand,

• they both define what language should be validated
• validate is a legacy so we only need to set probe to enable a new language (in normal cases)

But as I try to setup validation for json, with the eslint-plugin-jsonc, adding json to eslint.probe simply doesn't work. I have to set in eslint.validate as the plugin doc suggested. So is this a abnormal case?

I don't know if I understand this correctly. Can someone shed some light on this?

[dbaeumer]

The difference is as follows:

• probe tries to find a plugin but if it fails it doesn't validate the file.
• validate forces the validation even if a corresponding plugin can't be detected.

Since we don't have autodetection / probing for jsonc yet, you need to use validate.

Hope that helps.

[MarvinXu]

@dbaeumer Thanks for your quick reply! So why should I use probe at all if validate can work regardless of probing support?

[dbaeumer]

Probing ensures that the right plugins are installed. With validate you force the validation of the file. So you could force the validation of a C++ file which will result in very strange error messages since ESLint can't lint any C++ code.