• This is an enhancement suggestion in response to issues Error: Cannot find module 'cypress': fail to run action on pnpm workspace. #1054 and Cypress binary randomly missing with pnpm #1138.

What would you like

When the cypress-io/github-action processes a project with a pnpm-lock.yaml lockfile from the pnmp package manager it should be able to interpret pnpm workspaces correctly and run Cypress from a pnpm workspace, including dependency installation and caching.

For example, the following should work:

      - name: Cypress test
        uses: cypress-io/github-action@v6
        with:
          working-directory: examples/start-and-pnpm-workspaces/packages/workspace-1

This fails because Cypress can't find pnpm-lock.yaml to install dependencies.

• For pnpm dependency caching see enhancement suggestion Add dependency caching to pnpm #1044.

Why is this needed?

The workspace of a pnpm project does not contain any pnpm-lock.yaml file and cypress-io/github-action does not read and interpret any pnpm-workspace.yaml file in the root of a pnpm project using workspaces. This means that the action needs to be applied twice, once in the root and then again in the workspace in order to run Cypress in a pnpm workspace. (See pnpm workspaces.) This is error prone.

The cypress-io/github-action already provides support for Yarn workspaces. Not providing this functionality for pnpm projects with workspaces is inconsistent.

The benefit for users of pnpm projects with workspaces is that the workflows using GitHub Actions can be written in a more simpler way. This reduces the risk of introducing errors especially with caching the Cypress binary.

Background

pnpm has built-in support for monorepositories (AKA multi-package repositories, multi-project repositories, or monolithic repositories).

pnpm repos using workspaces and Cypress are typically structured similar to the following E2E example:

# repo root
/node_modules
/packages
/package.json
/pnpm-lock.yaml
/pnpm-workspace.yaml

# workspace 1
/packages/ws1
/packages/ws1/cypress/e2e/spec.cy.js
/packages/ws1/node_modules
/packages/ws1/cypress.config.js
/packages/ws1/package.json

# workspace 2
etc.

Other

• PR test: add pnpm workspaces example #1140 added instructions in the README > pnpm workspaces to describe how to handle this configuration without out-of-the-box support. See next section for snapshot of this text:

pnpm workspaces

If you are using pnpm workspaces you need to install dependencies and run Cypress tests in a workspace in separate steps. The snippet below shows this principle.

      ...
      - name: Install dependencies
        uses: cypress-io/github-action@v6
        with:
          working-directory: examples/start-and-pnpm-workspaces
          runTests: false

      - name: Cypress test
        uses: cypress-io/github-action@v6
        with:
          install: false
          working-directory: examples/start-and-pnpm-workspaces/packages/workspace-1
        ...

See the example project start-and-pnpm-workspaces and the example-start-and-pnpm-workspaces.yml workflow for a full working example including pnpm caching.