element-call-Github/docs/linking_concept_reasoning.md

Why do we not enable .pnpmfile.cjs by default

Background: The presence of the .pnpmfile.cjs adds a field to the pnpm-lock.yaml called: pnpmfileChecksum. This field is a checksum of the content of the .pnpmfile.cjs file. pnpm install --frozen-lockfile fails if there is a .pnpmfile.cjs but no pnpmfileChecksum or vice versa (or on mismatch).

TLDR: running with --ignore-pnpmfile will fail if pnpmfileChecksum is present.

pnpmfileChecksum + renovate bot

When the renovate bot creates a PR it runs pnpm install --ignore-pnpmfile. This means that the pnpmfileChecksum in the lockfile will be empty. This breaks builds that don't ignore the .pnpmfile.cjs-file. (CI that runs on the renovate PR) From here we have two possible paths:

• ignore .pnpmfile.cjs in all CI builds CI will also fail if we accidently add it locally.
• fixup the pnpm-lock.yaml in the renovate PR to contain the correct pnpmfileChecksum.

Ignoring in all CI builds means that CI will always fail if we enable the linking system. This is annoying but can be worked around with the git hook we provide that at least lets us know that we are commiting with enabled linking. Only if we remember setting it back/disbale linking (or let ourselves remember by the git hook) the CI will work.

Summary

• We will always run into conflicts with the pnpmfileChecksum because in renovate prs it will be empty (--ignore-pnpmfile)
• To keep it simple we set --ignore-pnpmfile in all of ours CI to see issues immediately.
• The only solution is to never have a .pnpmfile.cjs in the repository when pushing.
  • This way there will never be a commit with pnpmfileChecksum in the lockfile.
  • renovate (which uses --ignore-pnpmfile which we cannot disable) and other CI will work
• We are able to use the linking system locally if we cp this file from the scripts folder into ./ on demand.
• pnpm links:on and pnpm links:off + ./scripts/setup-linking.sh will help us with this.