pnpm v10 blocks Cypress binary installation by default

[MikeMcC399]

Description

Issue

pnpm@10.0.0 was released Jan 7, 2025 and includes a breaking change:

Lifecycle scripts of dependencies are not executed during installation by default!

The installation instructions for Cypress with pnpm

pnpm add --save-dev cypress

are no longer sufficient to install the Cypress binary together with the cypress npm module.

This affects also the Troubleshoot installation instructions.

Logs

$ pnpm add --save-dev cypress
Packages: +173
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Progress: resolved 173, reused 173, downloaded 0, added 173, done

devDependencies:
+ cypress 13.17.0

The following dependencies have build scripts that were ignored: cypress
To allow the execution of build scripts for these packages, add their names to "pnpm.onlyBuiltDependencies" in your "package.json", then run "pnpm rebuild"

Done in 11.4s

Alternatives

Add exception

Add cypress to the exception list for pnpm life cycle scripts in package.json:

  "pnpm": {
    "onlyBuiltDependencies": ["cypress"]
  }

Install Cypress binary manually

pnpm add --save-dev cypress
pnpm cypress install

This allows Cypress to run, however pnpm will continue to output the warning message about ignored build scripts.

[jennifer-shehane]

@MikeMcC399 This would be great to update.

[MikeMcC399]

@jennifer-shehane

This would be great to update.

• PR Add pnpm v10 install allowlist pnpm.onlyBuiltDependencies instructions #6072 submitted to add the update

I found that the Troubleshoot installation instructions could be executed unchanged.

Since the pnpm warning is quite explicit, I didn't add anything to the troubleshooting section. The warning should be self explanatory and any reader of the advanced installation page, where the troubleshooting instructions are located, can be implicitly expected to read the regular installation instructions first and be familiar with them.

The warning is:

The following dependencies have build scripts that were ignored: cypress
To allow the execution of build scripts for these packages, add their names to "pnpm.onlyBuiltDependencies" in your "package.json", then run "pnpm rebuild"

[MikeMcC399]

The release notes of pnpm@10.1.0 list:

• Added a new command for printing the list of dependencies with ignored build scripts: pnpm ignored-builds
• Added a new command for approving dependencies for running scripts during installation: pnpm approve-builds

I could not find these new commands on the https://pnpm.io/ documentation website yet, so I suggest to wait for pnpm to catch up and to stabilize before adding any new information for pnpm 10.x to the Cypress documentation.

[MikeMcC399]

pnpm@10.4.0 outputs the following warning:

╭ Warning ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│                                                                                            │
│   Ignored build scripts: cypress.                                                          │
│   Run "pnpm approve-builds" to pick which dependencies should be allowed to run scripts.   │
│                                                                                            │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

[MikeMcC399]

pnpm@10.4.0 has added the add CLI option --allow-build

The following command installs Cypress and directly gives permission to pnpm for the Cypress Life Cycle script postinstall to run so that it also installs the Cypress binary:

pnpm --allow-build=cypress add --save-dev cypress