learningequality / learningequality/studio

Upgrading pnpm needs pnpm-workspace.yaml

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#5,849 5 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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DEV: dev-ops DEV: frontend
Dominant language
Python
Stars
191
Forks
307
Avg merge
5d 6h
Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

This issue is not open for contribution. Visit Contributing guidelines to learn about the contributing process and how to find suitable issues.

Target branch: unstable

Observed behavior

After commit a3e678bd6 ("Add minReleaseAge to pnpm settings to reduce likelihood of supply chain compromises"), pnpm install and all pnpm run commands fail locally with:

ERROR  packages field missing or empty
For help, run: pnpm help install

This affects every pnpm command - including pnpm install, pnpm run test, and pnpm run devserver.

Errors and logs

$ pnpm install
 ERROR  packages field missing or empty
For help, run: pnpm help install

$ pnpm run test
 ERROR  packages field missing or empty
For help, run: pnpm help run

Expected behavior

pnpm install completes successfully and all pnpm run scripts work, as they did before pnpm-workspace.yaml was introduced.

User-facing consequences

Any contributor who pulls the latest unstable and tries to set up or run the frontend locally is completely blocked. CI still passes because pnpm/action-setup@v5 in GitHub Actions handles the workspace config differently, so the breakage isn't visible there.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Clone the repo and check out unstable
  2. Run pnpm install
  3. See ERROR packages field missing or empty

Context

OS: macOS (confirmed), likely affects all platforms

AI usage

Used Claude Code to diagnose the root cause from error logs and trace it to the missing packages field. I verified the fix myself by running pnpm install locally before filing.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Inspect pnpm-workspace.yaml and the changes from commit a3e678bd6. Reproduce the failure with pnpm install, then verify the workspace configuration by running pnpm install and the affected pnpm run commands, including test and devserver. Done means installation and the listed scripts complete without the packages-field error.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
yaml
Domain
build-system
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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