pnpm 12.0.0-rc.7

pnpm 12 RC 7

on Node.js NPM

Minor Changes

• node_modules/.modules.yaml no longer records the registries an install resolved from, and the recorded copy is dropped from the file on the first install that rewrites it.

  It dated from the lockfile format that spelled a dependency's path relative to its registry, where reading an installed tree meant knowing the registries it was installed with. Dependency paths have not carried a registry for several major versions, and the recorded copy outlived its use: pnpm list, pnpm why, and single-project installs preferred it over the project's own configuration, so a project whose registry had changed since its last install was still read through the old one.

  They now use the configured registries, like every other command already did.

• When enableGlobalVirtualStore is on, every process pnpm spawns for the project (pnpm run, pnpm exec, lifecycle scripts) now receives a NODE_PATH pointing at the project's hoisted node_modules, plus a NODE_OPTIONS --import flag that registers a resolve hook restoring NODE_PATH lookups for ESM imports. Dependencies that import undeclared ("phantom") packages keep resolving under the global virtual store — for both CommonJS and ESM — without installing the @pnpm/plugin-esm-node-path config dependency pnpm/pnpm#9618. Tools run by pnpm dlx resolve such dependencies too: the JS CLI passes them the same environment, while the Rust CLI's dlx cache is self-contained, so its layout already exposes them.

• A registry can now declare that its abbreviated metadata carries the time field, so resolutionMode: time-based reads the full metadata document only from the registries that need it:

  resolutionMode: time-based
  registries:
    https://npm.internal.example/:
      supportsTimeField: true

  registry.npmjs.org omits time from abbreviated metadata, so a time-based resolution has to fall back to the much larger full document. That fallback used to be all-or-nothing: registrySupportsTimeField answered for every registry at once, so a project resolving from both the public registry and a Verdaccio instance either paid for full metadata everywhere or claimed a time field npmjs does not serve. The answer is now per registry, and registrySupportsTimeField remains the answer for every registry that does not declare one.

  The declaration is also sent to a pnpr server, which applies it to the resolution it runs on the client's behalf.

• A pnpr resolve request now carries the client's registries the way the registries setting declares them — keyed by URL, with the scopes routed to each, the bare-specifier prefix each answers to, and each one's serverType — in place of the prefix map it used to send.

  The server routes them through the same inversion the config reader runs, so a pnpr-served install resolves a scoped dependency from the registry that scope is routed to, which it previously could not: only the default registry and the prefix-addressed ones reached the server. A declared serverType reaches it too, so the tarball URLs pnpr omits from the lockfile match the ones the client reconstructs.

  Built-in scope routes the project has not pointed elsewhere are not declared, so a pnpr server's allowlist is not asked about npm.jsr.io on requests that resolve no JSR package.

  A registry a request only declares is no longer refused up front for being off the server's allowlist — a client describes its whole configuration, including scopes a given resolve never reaches, so a stray @scope:registry in a developer's ~/.npmrc no longer fails every install against a pnpr server that does not serve it. The boundary moves to the fetch itself: an origin the resolve does reach is refused before the request leaves the server, with the same message.

  This changes the resolve and verify-lockfile request bodies. A pnpr server and its clients have to be on matching versions; the protocol is still experimental and unversioned.

• A resolve request now carries the client's resolutionMode, so an install delegated to a pnpr server picks versions the way the client would. time-based and lowest-direct reached the server as nothing at all, leaving it on its highest default: the returned lockfile pinned the highest satisfying version of every dependency, and the setting appeared to be ignored.

  This adds a field to the resolve request body. A server older than its client ignores it and keeps resolving highest; the protocol is still experimental and unversioned.

• The registries setting now declares a registry once, keyed by its URL, with everything about that registry in the entry: how it lays out tarball URLs, the scopes routed to it, and the bare-specifier prefix it answers to.

  registries:
    https://artifactory.example.com/artifactory/api/npm/npm-virtual/:
      serverType: artifactory
      scopes: ['@acme', '@acme-internal']
      prefix: work

  • serverType tells pnpm how the registry lays out its tarball URLs, which decides whether a URL can be omitted from pnpm-lock.yaml:
    • undeclared (the default) — strict. Only the exact canonical URL is treated as reconstructible.
    • npm — the registry behaves like registry.npmjs.org, which also serves a scoped package from its percent-encoded path. Declare this for a faithful mirror or caching proxy of the public registry so its tarball URLs can be omitted too.
    • artifactory — JFrog Artifactory repeats the scope in a scoped package's tarball filename (@acme/widget/-/@acme/widget-1.0.0.tgz) where the npm registry strips it (@acme/widget/-/widget-1.0.0.tgz). Declaring it lets pnpm rebuild that URL, so it is omitted from pnpm-lock.yaml instead of being written out for every scoped package pnpm/get-npm-tarball-url#16.
  • scopes lists the @-prefixed scopes that resolve from this registry. A bare '@' is the scope-less default registry, the one the registry setting names.
  • prefix is the alias a dependency addresses this registry by, as in "foo": "work:^1.0.0".

  The layout is never inferred from the registry URL, so nothing changes unless you declare it; registry.npmjs.org continues to behave as npm without being declared. Because the lockfile depends on serverType, it is read from pnpm-workspace.yaml only — a serverType in the global config.yaml is ignored, so one developer's machine cannot shape a lockfile their collaborators read back with a different layout. Credentials are rejected in this setting, in a key as well as in a field, and still belong in .npmrc. An entry that routes nothing to itself and matches no configured registry is reported as a warning rather than silently ignored.

  Migrating

  The older registries shape, a map of <scope>: <url> strings, still works and needs no change:

  registries:
    '@acme': https://npm.acme.example/

  namedRegistries is deprecated in favor of the prefix field, and is still read for prefixes registries does not declare.

  toLockfileResolution and isCanonicalRegistryTarballUrl now take their registry and layout as an options object rather than positional arguments, so @pnpm/lockfile.utils and @pnpm/resolving.tarball-url get a major bump.

• Added virtualStoreType, which names where the virtual store lives — one store per machine, or one per project:

  virtualStoreType: global   # or: project

  It is the canonical spelling of enableGlobalVirtualStore, which keeps working. When a project sets both, virtualStoreType wins. It can also be set through PNPM_CONFIG_VIRTUAL_STORE_TYPE and read back with pnpm config get virtualStoreType. The default is unchanged — project, so the shared store stays opt-in.

  The setting is independent of nodeLinker. isolated and pnp both work with either store type, and hoisted writes no virtual store at all, so it is unaffected.

Patch Changes

• Fixed pnpm patch-commit in project and edit paths containing non-ASCII characters.

• Fixed 404 errors when installing from a registry that serves scoped packages only from a percent-encoded path, such as GitHub Enterprise Server. Outside registry.npmjs.org, a tarball URL that encodes the scope separator as %2f or %2F is no longer mistaken for one that pnpm can rebuild from the package name, version, and registry, so it is kept in pnpm-lock.yaml and requested verbatim on the next install #13534.

• Fixed an inconsistency where minimumReleaseAgeExclude (and trustPolicyExclude) wildcard/bare-name rules behaved differently in the evaluator and normalizer. A bare rule now consistently evaluates as matching every version, preventing unexpected behavior and silent widening of version policy exemptions when pnpm rewrites the workspace manifest pnpm/pnpm#13725.

• Fixed pnpm update --global --latest failing with a 404 error when a globally installed package was not added from the registry by name. Packages installed from a local path (link:/file:), a git repository, a tarball URL, an npm: alias, or a named registry now keep their spec during a global update instead of being looked up by name in the default registry. See #12854.

• pnpm outdated and pnpm update --interactive now dereference catalog: specifiers before querying the registry. A catalog entry that is an npm alias ('@types/zkochan__table': npm:@types/table@6.3.2) no longer fails with ERR_PNPM_OUTDATED_REGISTRY_ERROR for the alias key, and pnpm outdated --compatible compares against the range the catalog holds instead of skipping the dependency.

• A failed packument request now reports the status the registry returned (404 Not Found) instead of "error decoding response body".

• Installs with a cold cache are significantly faster: lockfile verification no longer delays resolution or downloads and re-checks far less data over the network, and downloaded packages are linked while the remaining downloads are still in flight.

• Fixed pnpm installs using pnpr to honor the client's autoInstallPeers, dedupePeers, and excludeLinksFromLockfile settings pnpm/pnpm#13389.

• The three registry lookups are now named for what they are keyed by, so that none of them is called registries — a name the registries setting itself has taken:

  before	after
  Config.registries	Config.registriesByScope
  Config.namedRegistries	Config.registriesByPrefix
  Config.registryOptions	Config.registryOptionsByUrl

  The same rename applies to the RegistryContext fields, the Registries and NamedRegistries types (now RegistriesByScope and RegistriesByPrefix), normalizeRegistries / normalizeNamedRegistries (now normalizeRegistriesByScope / normalizeRegistriesByPrefix), and the BUILTIN_NAMED_REGISTRIES constant (now BUILTIN_REGISTRIES_BY_PREFIX).

  This is an internal rename: no setting, error code, lockfile field, or .pnpmfile.cjs hook field changes. A preResolution hook still reads ctx.registries, which is the name pacquet passes as well. The registries and namedRegistries settings are read under the names users write them.

  The pnpr resolve request sends registriesByPrefix where it sent namedRegistries. A pnpr server and its clients must be on matching versions, which is already the case for an experimental server.

• An install that had to re-hash store files to verify them now reports it. If that cost more than a second, it says how long — The integrity of N files was checked in 2.5s. — and if it was quick but covered more than a thousand files, it names the cause instead: their timestamps changed since the store recorded them, which a backup tool, an antivirus scan or a copied store can do.

• Installs are faster in workspaces that declare inter-workspace dependencies with plain ranges ("*", "^1.2.3") rather than the workspace: protocol. With preferWorkspacePackages enabled, linking such a dependency no longer makes a registry request that cannot change the outcome — and workspace packages that were never published no longer cost a 404 on every install.

• An override change is now absorbed by the fast lockfile update even when another, unchanged override uses the catalog: protocol. Previously any catalog:-valued override forced a full re-resolution whenever the override list changed, which could move unrelated packages in the lockfile (for example after pnpm audit --fix added an override).

• Reduced peak memory usage when installing large packages. A tarball whose compressed size is at least 16 MiB, or whose registry-reported unpacked size is at least 64 MiB, is now extracted by streaming the decompression directly into the content-addressable store instead of materializing the whole decompressed archive in memory, and its large files are hashed and written to the store incrementally.

• pnpm why and pnpm list no longer print stray [90m-style codes in their trees when the terminal supports colors. The bolded labels — the searched package in pnpm why, the project header and the matched package in pnpm list — dropped the escape byte of the styles they already carried, leaving the color codes as visible text.