publishDirectory appears to break monorepos

[antony]

pnpm version: 7.7.0

The addition of publishDirectory to the lockfile, and subsequent pointing of devDependencies to publish directories breaks monorepos where builds are required to publish the dependencies.

Often, the publishDirectory doesn't exist at development time.

Code to reproduce the issue:

Working on a repro, but offering this as a heads-up whilst that happens.

Expected behavior:

'@beyonk/brand': link:../../components/brand

With pnpm < 7.7.0, dependencies within the lockfile point to the development files, not the published files, which might not yet have been built. They certainly aren't build during development, because it would require running (for example) the svelte-kit package command on every change.

Package is run at build time, on CI, and may not even exist locally.

pnpm does not point dev dependencies to published directories.

Actual behavior:

'@beyonk/brand': link:../../components/brand/package

pnpm adds publishDirectory: package to the lockfile, and points the dependency path to the publishDirectory.

Additional information:

• node -v prints: v16.15.0
• Windows, macOS, or Linux?: Linux
• SvelteKit, pnpm 7.7.0, monorepo.

[zkochan]

This appears to be the expected behavior, see #3901

As a workaround, you may use linked dependencies if the issue is with devDependencies. So in your package.json you may actually use:

"@beyonk/brand": "link:../../components/brand"

[zkochan]

But looks like it is a breaking change, so I will make it opt-in for now.

[gfellerph]

I'm running into something similar for swisspost/design-system#225. The dist folders don't exist when pnpm install is running, therefore (my guess), the link is not set up correctly in the node_modules of dependents.

A fix would be creating an empty dist folder and linking that. In the building phase, the package files will appear in the folder and dependents would be able to use the packages.

[zaripych]

I'm running into an issue here as well. My monorepo is designed in a way that publishDirectory is only used for publishing a package (as the name of the config clearly suggests). It worked just fine before v7.7.0.

This was possible for me as packages in my monorepo reference each others TypeScript files directly, instead of using compilation/bundler targets. Before release I could pretty much do anything without having to explicitly build packages - with any code changes being picked up immediately, with every package linked to each other - now nothing works unless I bundle everything first. It's quite inconvenient and slows down development a lot to have to bundle packages just to see type system pick up changes from another package. I don't know how widely adopted this approach is - but it would be shame as dev experience is much more superior this way.

Additionally - publishDirectory is expected to contain another package.json which is result of bundling, possibly with different dependencies in it. This could happen as some dependencies are bundled-in and some remain unchanged. This is possible if dependencies are inlined via rollup. Or when devDependencies are completely removed for cleanliness. Which of these package.json would be used as the source of truth for dependencies is a little unclear.

I would recommend reverting the change in v.7.7.0 related to publishDirectory and possibly introducing a separate configuration (e.g. maybe named linkDirectory?) with edge cases of different dependencies documented somewhere. 👍

[zkochan]

I can revert it and add a new setting to publishConfig that will tell pnpm to symlink the package from the publish directory. Something like

{
  "publishConfig": {
    "directory": "dist",
    "linkDirectory": true
  }
}

[antony]

Apologies I don't know the rationale behind this change in the first place, but why would a monorepo want to link published directories? Isn't linking a dev time concern?

On Sat, 30 Jul 2022 at 19:00, Zoltan Kochan ***@***.***> wrote: I can revert it and add a new setting to publishConfig that will tell pnpm to symlink the package from the publish directory. Something like { "publishConfig": { "directory": "dist", "linkDirectory": true } } — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#5115 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABVORJBWU5HDDYPSYTWEG3VWVUSBANCNFSM55AZ7AEQ> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

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________________________________ ꜽ . antony jones . http://www.enzy.org

[zkochan]

This is how publishConfig.directory works in Lerna.