pnpm-ws-link

A CLI tool to generate pnpm overrides for linking external workspace packages.

Description

pnpm-ws-link helps you link packages from external monorepos into your current project by automatically generating the necessary pnpm.overrides in your package.json. It scans the provided package directories, identifies their workspace: dependencies, resolves the paths, and adds link overrides.

Installation

npm install -g pnpm-ws-link
# or
pnpm add -g pnpm-ws-link
# or if you use volta
volta install pnpm-ws-link

Usage

Run the command in the root of the repository where you want to add the overrides:

pnpm-ws-link /path/to/external/package1 /path/to/external/package2

This will:

• Read the package.json of each specified package directory.
• Add the packages themselves to the overrides.
• For any workspace: dependencies in their dependencies field, resolve their paths and add them to overrides.
• Update your package.json with the new pnpm.overrides.

Options

• --dry: Preview the overrides without modifying package.json.

pnpm-ws-link --dry /path/to/external/package

Example

Suppose you have an external monorepo with packages pkg-a and pkg-b, where pkg-a depends on pkg-b via workspace:*.

Running:

pnpm-ws-link /external/repo/packages/pkg-a

Will add to your package.json:

{
	"pnpm": {
		"overrides": {
			"pkg-a": "link:../external/repo/packages/pkg-a",
			"pkg-b": "link:../external/repo/packages/pkg-b"
		}
	}
}

Requirements

• The external packages must be in directories containing package.json.
• If a package has workspace: dependencies, the tool will look for pnpm-workspace.yaml upward from the package directory to resolve the workspace packages.