Should we enable global virtual store by default in pnpm v12?

[zkochan]

I want the opinion of some @pnpm/collaborators here. As you can see most of the pnpm users vote "yes":
https://x.com/pnpmjs/status/2088685130898432465

In general I am OK to do so but it will probably be a rough ride.

[jakebailey]

Is this the feature that confuses TypeScript? Skimming that thread, it does seem that way...

[zkochan]

sometimes. In the pnpm monorepo it seems like everything works. I am trying to make a tool that fixes such issues automatically: https://github.com/pnpm/xray.

[karlhorky]

Will this cause unexpected side effects in other projects when editing files in node_modules by hand (without patches)?

Or is there a recommendation to avoid this?

[zkochan]

It will sometimes. But this is already the case on systems don't have copy-on-write support.

[BlackHole1]

Personally speaking, my only concern is that there may be more developers reporting issues related to GVS (such as why it works fine in v11 but doesn't work properly in v12). However, I believe that in this day and age, developers can use AI Agents like Claude, Codex, and Kimi to help them quickly resolve such issues.

Furthermore, it's conceivable that once GVS becomes mainstream in the future (hoping that npm, yarn, and bun will also follow suit after seeing the benefits of GVS), it will bring tremendous convenience to developers, including but not limited to: git worktree, etc.

Moreover, this is a choice of default values, and the original functionality remains unaffected. Developers can switch back at any time.

It's somewhat like CJS → ESM, but the situation is not nearly as bad.

[zkochan]

I have decided to postpone it because the v12 upgrade will already be stressful and we'll probably have tasks for weeks or months to fix all the small edge cases. However, I am fine releasing a v13 as soon as v12 becomes reliable and most of the users migrated to it.

[btea]

It's appropriate to slow down a bit; the recent update frequency has been amazing. 👍