Is the node_modules directory expected in the pnpm 12 Rust-based release archive?

[Varorbc]

Hi, I downloaded the pnpm 12 release (the Rust-based rewrite), and after extracting the archive, I noticed that it contains a node_modules directory.

I’d like to confirm whether this is intentional:
Is this directory supposed to be included in the release package, or was it accidentally left over from the build process?

@zkochan

[Pistonight]

Same question here, does a pnpm installation require those packages in node_modules to work?

[zkochan]

yes, pnpm ships with node-gyp, which is needed for building many dependencies. npm cli is also shipped with node-gyp.

[Pistonight]

@zkochan What is required to setup pnpm manually to allow it to discover the bundled node-gyp? Does it just look for dist next to the pnpm binary?

What is weird is that after running the standalone installation script, the dist/node_modules dir is not in the global @pnpm/exe package when I inspect it (in fact I cannot find it anywhere inside PNPM_HOME)

# pwd 
E:\pnpn-install-test\.pnpm\global\v11\ad70-18d115c3377944ac-0\node_modules\.pnpm
\@pnpm+exe@file+C++Users+zha_d2f57d66d97c97115b00015ea2e5be5f\node_modules\@pnpm\exe


# dust
  97B   ┌── package.json  │█                                              │   0%
 310B   │ ┌── node-gyp-bin│█                                              │   0%
 310B   ├─┴ dist          │█                                              │   0%
9.1Ki   │ ┌── .bin        │█                                              │   0%
9.1Ki   ├─┴ node_modules  │█                                              │   0%
220Ki   │ ┌── package     │█                                              │   1%
220Ki   ├─┴ unpacked      │█                                              │   1%
 38Mi   ├── pnpm.exe      │██████████████████████████████████████████████ │  99%
 39Mi ┌─┴ .               │██████████████████████████████████████████████ │ 100%

The script in node-gyp-bin still seem to point to the non-existing node_modules though. I also observed same behavior when running the shell script in ubuntu.

Does anyone know a project that depends on node-gyp so I can test this? Just asked AI and was told to try better-sqlite3
and it did not work

node_modules/.pnpm/better-sqlite3@13.0.3/node_modules/better-sqlite3: Running install script, failed in 81ms
.../node_modules/better-sqlite3 install$ node-gyp rebuild
│
│ E:\pnpn-install-test\test-pkg\node_modules\.pnpm\better-sqlite3@13.0.3\node…
│ node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1573
│   throw err;
│   ^
│
│ Error: Cannot find module 'E:\pnpn-install-test\.pnpm\global\v11\557a16cc51…
│     at Module._resolveFilename (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1569:15)
│     at wrapResolveFilename (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1123:27)
│     at defaultResolveImplForCJSLoading (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:11…
│     at resolveForCJSWithHooks (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1174:12)
│     at Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1346:5)
│     at wrapModuleLoad (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:261:19)
│     at Module.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run…
│     at node:internal/main/run_main_module:33:47 {
│   code: 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND',
│   requireStack: []
│ }
│
│ Node.js v26.8.1
└─ Failed in 81ms at E:\pnpn-install-test\test-pkg\node_modules/.pnpm\better-sqlite3@13.0.3\node_modules\better-sqlite3
Error: ERR_PNPM_EXECUTOR_LIFECYCLE_SCRIPT_FAILED

  × rebuilding dependencies
  ╰─▶ better-sqlite3@13.0.3 install: `node-gyp rebuild` exited with exit code:
      1

[Pistonight]

Seems to also repro in 12.2.1 - I thought it was fixed but turns out I forgot to update packageManager, so it installed another pnpm in package-manager-store and used that version to build, which contained the right dist files

[zkochan]

ok, maybe we should make a fix. How were you installing pnpm? with what command?

[Pistonight]

$env:PNPM_HOME="E:\pnpn-install-test\.pnpm";
$env:PNPM_VERSION="12.2.1"; Invoke-WebRequest https://get.pnpm.io/install.ps1 -UseBasicParsing | Invoke-Expression

export PNPM_HOME=/home/testuser/pnpm-install-test/.pnpm
curl -fsSL https://get.pnpm.io/install.sh | env PNPM_VERSION=12.2.1 sh -