[rush] Unclear how to switch to npm package manger

[code-brewer]

I have a working rush demo, then change to npm by edit rush.json : comment out "pnpmVersion": "2.15.1" and select "npmVersion": "4.5.0" .

But comands like rush unlink, rush purge, rush update give out Error:
Rush Multi-Project Build Tool 5.7.1 - https://rushjs.io ERROR: An unrecognized file "pnpmfile.js" was found in the Rush config folder: ~/rushDemo/common/config/rush

If i delete common/config/rush/pnpmfile.js, then got error message :
RROR: An unrecognized file "shrinkwrap.yaml" was found in the Rush config folder: ~/rushDemo/common/config/rush

Can anyone show me how to use npm instead of pnpm ?

[octogonz]

Delete both those files. (They are "unrecognized" because they're not used by NPM, and generally Rush doesn't want misleading files lying around to confuse people or tools.)

Then run rush update to create an NPM-specific file.

Rush's behavior does seem a little misleading. Perhaps we should document it better or improve the error message, if someone can propose a better behavior.

@iclanton FYI

[code-brewer]

Thank for your help. It works. Didn't expect i was just one step away from success, but i was horrified and stop by the potentially endless files deletion.

It would be better to note down this work-around in document even if can not gracefully solve this problem currently.

[nickpape]

Yeah, we could have Rush collect a list of all unrecognized files. Also, we store the last package manager that was used for an install in the temp folder, so we could detect the package manager change and leave a message like:

Rush has detected you may be switching from PNPM to NPM.
In order to do so, Rush will need to delete the following PNPM-specific files:

- /common/config/rush/pnpmfile.js
- /shrinkwrap.yaml

If no new shrinkwrap file is found, you could also add:

Additionally, no NPM shrinkwrap file was detected.
You may also need to run `rush update`.

[gabrielliwerant]

Suggestion: Instead of rush init generating files based on pnpm by default, allow the user to select which package manager they use by prompt and then generate initial files accordingly. This would prevent confusion when switching a config value (which I would not expect to complain about auto-generated files from initial setup) and would be in line with how npm init works.

[tmeindle]

upgrading pnpmVersion to 6.2.5 in rush.json also produces this message as well

[GongT]

pnpm 6 change pnpmfile.js to .pnpmfile.cjs, we need rename it.