Allow usage of pnpm

[dancojocaru2000]

Allow the usage on pnpm instead of yarn or npm.

Perhaps a guide for doing the init manually would be helpful until such capability is introduced.

[github-actions]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue in the past 3 months, so it has been marked as stale and it will be closed automatically if no further activity occurs in the next 7 days.

[thymikee]

Reopening, pnpm is something that we'd like to support

[TMisiukiewicz]

Hey, support for pnpm is something i have been working on for a while. I was able to make it work with init command and make project running on iOS and Android. However, since pnpm is using symlinks, I discovered a few pitfalls here.

1. node_modules structure is different. - there is a need of manual changing the paths in the following files in android and ios folders:

• ios/Podfile - path to native_modules
• android/app/build.gradle - path to native_modules.gradle
• android/settings.gradle - path to native_modules.gradle

The pnpm paths are strongly dependent on installed versions of the dependencies, e.g. .pnpm/@react-native-community+cli-platform-android@9.3.1/node_modules/@react-native-community/cli-platform-android/native_modules.gradle

2. there is a need of adding the Metro resolver for symlinks: rnx-kit/metro-resolver-symlinks
3. Developer needs to manually run pod install after initializing the project - CocoaPods installation fails due to incorrect native_modules path in Podfile mentioned in 1, but that step can be just skipped in init when using pnpm as package manager.

Another possible solution is creating a .npmrc file, adding node-linker: hoisted inside of it and running pnpm install, but i think it's missing the point of using pnpm as the node_modules structure will become similar to the one known from yarn and npm.

Where to go from there? I think adding all the required steps to make it work to the docs is one of the options, but definitely not the best one.

[rahulpandey]

Following steps working for me
Added public-hoist-pattern configuration in .npmrc to hoist packages from specific scopes:
.npmrc:

public-hoist-pattern[]=*@react-native-community*
public-hoist-pattern[]=*@react-native*

Also integrated the following changes in metro.config.js:

const { getDefaultConfig, mergeConfig } = require('@react-native/metro-config');
const path = require('path');

/**
 * Metro configuration
 * https://facebook.github.io/metro/docs/configuration
 *
 * @type {import('metro-config').MetroConfig}
 */
const projectRoot = __dirname;

const config = {
  watchFolders: [projectRoot],
  resolver: {
    nodeModulesPaths: [path.resolve(projectRoot, 'node_modules')],
  },
};
module.exports = mergeConfig(getDefaultConfig(__dirname), config);

React and React Native versions:
"react": "18.2.0",
"react-native": "0.73.5",

It seems that every Gradle command is working fine through the command line. However, when I try to sync from Android Studio, the following error is displayed: 'Missing ExternalProject for:'

[WarrenBuffering]

Are you saying these changes worked for you @rahulpandey? Or are you still getting the Missing ExternalProject for: error?

[bimusiek]

For us we had react native working with pnpm without hoisting. With new arch enabled. Then at one point of upgrading to newest RN, it stopped working with the error:

Missing ExternalProject for :

However, it works if using gradle from the command line.