shared-pnpm-store

Shared pnpm Store (shared-pnpm-store)

Mounts a shared Docker volume as the pnpm store directory so packages are downloaded once and reused across multiple devcontainers. Points pnpm at the volume via containerEnv — no pnpm invocation, no symlink.

Example Usage

"features": {
    "ghcr.io/itplusx/devcontainer-features/shared-pnpm-store:1": {}
}

Options

Options Id	Description	Type	Default Value

How it works

This feature shares one pnpm content-addressable store across every devcontainer on the host, so each package is downloaded and unpacked only once.

It does this with four declarative pieces and no pnpm invocation:

• Named volume devcontainer-shared-pnpm-store mounted at /mnt/shared-pnpm-store. A named volume (not a workspace bind mount) is shared by all containers on the host — that is the entire sharing mechanism.
• containerEnv relocates the store with NPM_CONFIG_STORE_DIR=/mnt/shared-pnpm-store. pnpm honors npm_config_*-style settings, so this is the variable that actually moves the store across pnpm versions. PNPM_CONFIG_STORE_DIR is set to the same value as forward-looking coverage for pnpm's native PNPM_CONFIG_* variables (not honored for store-dir on pnpm 10.x, but harmless).
• install.sh creates the mount point and gives it to the remote user.
• oncreate.sh (onCreateCommand) re-asserts ownership for the current non-root user on every container create.

Because pnpm is never invoked, this feature avoids the pnpm config set --global / PNPM_HOME / PATH / non-interactive-shell problems that mount-pnpm-store has to patch. It is a simpler alternative; the two features are independent.

Ownership of the shared store

The named volume is mounted over /mnt/shared-pnpm-store at runtime, so the build-time chown in install.sh only sticks the first time the volume is created. oncreate.sh therefore sudo chowns the store to the current user on every create (skipped when running as root).

Note

If you use the same volume from devcontainers running as different users at the same time, each container's onCreateCommand will chown the store to its own user. This is inherent to sharing one store across users. The intended use is a single developer with a consistent remote user.

Ensuring pnpm is installed

This feature does not install pnpm. It only configures where pnpm puts its store, so it works whether pnpm comes from the base image or another feature. There is a soft dependency (installsAfter) on ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/node, common-utils, and fish. If pnpm is installed by some other feature, you may need overrideFeatureInstallOrder to make sure it runs before this one.

OS and Architecture Support

Architectures: amd and arm

OS: ubuntu, debian

Shells: bash, zsh, fish (the feature sets environment only; it does not depend on the interactive shell)

Volume Mount Naming

The volume is named devcontainer-shared-pnpm-store. Ensure no other Docker volume collides with this name. (This is a different volume from mount-pnpm-store's global-devcontainer-pnpm-store, so the two features do not share a store with each other.)

Changelog

Version	Notes
1.0.0	Initial release

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Note: This file was auto-generated from the devcontainer-feature.json. Add additional notes to a NOTES.md.