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pnpm 12.17.0 Adds Global Peer Checks, Dependency-Group Override Selectors and Cargo and Python Updates in pnpm outdated

pnpm 12.17.0 adds pnpm peers check --global, :prod, :optional and :peer override selectors, and Cargo and Python updates in pnpm outdated, per its release notes.

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Overview

pnpm 12.17.0 was published on GitHub on October 30, according to the release page. The release notes summarize it as adding pnpm peers check --global, dependency-group selectors and wildcards in overrides, and runtime, package manager, Cargo and Python updates in pnpm outdated and pnpm update. They also list fixes for files that other users could not read in Docker images and for repeat installs that missed changes to local dependencies.

What the Release Adds

The 12.17.0 release notes list three minor changes.

  • Global peer checks. pnpm peers check now accepts --global (-g) to check globally installed packages, and after a global install or update the peer dependency warning now suggests pnpm peers check -g.
  • Updates beyond npm packages. pnpm outdated and pnpm update now inspect and update package manager and runtime versions in devEngines.packageManager, packageManager, devEngines.runtime, engines.runtime and runtime: dependencies. With cargo.enabled or python.enabled, the two commands also inspect and update Cargo dependencies in Cargo.toml and Cargo.lock and Python dependencies in pyproject.toml and pylock.toml.
  • Override selectors. overrides selectors now support :prod, :optional and :peer pseudo-selectors that target a single dependency group, plus * wildcard patterns on parent and target package names. The notes add that an override with a non-range value, such as npm: or file:, no longer adds a peer dependency to dependencies, and that removing an optional dependency with "-" now also removes the duplicate entry from dependencies.

Where the Changes Trace Back

Two of the changes link to public GitHub issues. The peer-check change links to issue 17504, which the reporter filed against pnpm 12.15.0. Its reproduction shows pnpm update --global --latest printing a warning that suggests running pnpm peers check, after which pnpm peers check -g returned error: unexpected argument '-g' found. In the issue’s expected-behavior section, the reporter asked for -g and --global flags or, failing that, for pnpm update to stop recommending a command that does not apply to global dependencies.

The overrides change links to issue 5391, titled “pnpm.overrides can force a version of a peerDependency”. The issue’s author wrote that a dependency sometimes specifies a peer dependency instead of a normal dependency and asked to override that peer version for a specific package without changing the project-scoped peer dependency. A reply on the issue from zkochan, whose association is listed as member, reads “This is too specific. I don’t think we want to support it.” and points to a pnpmfile hook as an alternative. GitHub lists the issue as closed as completed, and the 12.17.0 notes link it from the overrides entry.

Fixes in the Patch Section

The release notes’ patch changes include several install and workspace fixes:

  • Files that pnpm creates in a project now get the permissions the umask gives any new file, such as 0644. According to the notes, several of them were previously readable only by the user who ran pnpm, which broke Docker images that run as a different user. The notes say a different user running pnpm run reinstalled dependencies because it could not read node_modules/.pnpm-workspace-state-v1.json.
  • Hardlinking from the store now stats each store file once per install. The notes say a store file had been stat’ed again for every package that links it since pnpm 12.8.0, and that on an offline install of a large workspace this added up to 15% system CPU.
  • pnpm --env-file now reads files the way node --env-file does, so $VAR is no longer expanded and Windows paths such as C:\Users\me load unchanged.

Relation to the Previous Release

The global --env-file flag itself arrived in the preceding minor. The 12.16.0 release notes describe a repeatable global --env-file <path> flag, support for updating a symlinked pnpm-lock.yaml through a symlinkedLockfileTargetDirs setting, and a --no-modify-path option for pnpm setup. The same notes list fixes for two security issues, in zstd decompression and in signing. The 12.17.0 change to --env-file parsing therefore adjusts a flag introduced in 12.16.0, per the two sets of release notes.

The Herald has covered earlier releases in the 12 line, including 12.12 and 12.12.1, which it titled “pnpm 12.12 Adds Remote Task Caching to pnpm pipeline and an addMissingPeerTypes Setting; 12.12.1 Adds a tool: Protocol and dist-tag OIDC”.

What We Don’t Know

The release notes do not say how many projects use the Cargo and Python update paths, which sit behind the cargo.enabled and python.enabled settings. They also do not state whether the :peer pseudo-selector is intended as the full answer to the request in issue 5391, which was opened in 2022 and first answered with a pnpmfile-hook suggestion.