react-email: email command fails within pnpm workspace

@bukinoshita If I understand correctly, the current model of the preview server is:

1. Download a tarball archive that includes a client directory which is in itself a node project, and extract that directory out of the tarball into a folder (.react-email)
2. Install dependencies inside the newly created .react-email project
3. Instantiate a watcher to sync emails into the .react-email project
4. Run the nextjs dev server

This seems overly complex. If someone is using the react-email package then they will, with absolute certainty, need to install the dependencies inside client at some point in life. Why are those dependencies only defined there, rather than have them exist as dependencies of react-email itself? Which brings me to my next question - Why is client downloaded extracted and ran as a separate project? The next server could be created from within the cli tool, which would fix this issue

I’d be glad to work on a PR for the aforementioned change if it’s relevant

pretty easy workaround is to add the .react-email folder to your pnpm-workspaces.yaml

packages:
  - "packages/*"
  - "apps/**"
  - "apps/email/.react-email"

edit: to add more explanation, pnpm workspaces don’t look for hidden directories that start with ., which is why you need to manually add it in the pnpm-workspaces.yaml file. there technically is no bug or issue here, it’s just how pnpm works

Can we configure the client to work with pnpm by default?

Also just ran into this

I’m using this patch as a workaround to use this package in a pnpm project. You may use it with the patch feature in pnpm.

# patches/react-email@1.9.5.patch
diff --git a/dist/source/utils/install-dependencies.js b/dist/source/utils/install-dependencies.js
index 24f4a82f14037a4e341775fe4f273016adf8ac2e..155ff41d5d3bfb3d185f774703bcd1033096580d 100644
--- a/dist/source/utils/install-dependencies.js
+++ b/dist/source/utils/install-dependencies.js
@@ -11,6 +11,10 @@ const ora_1 = __importDefault(require("ora"));
 const log_symbols_1 = __importDefault(require("log-symbols"));
 const close_ora_on_sigint_1 = require("./close-ora-on-sigint");
 const installDependencies = async (packageManager) => {
+    if(packageManager === 'pnpm'){
+        console.warn(`\n🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨\nUsing \`npm\` instead of \`${packageManager}\` to install react-email preview app dependencies\nThis patch should be removed when react-email can support existing in a pnpm workspace.\nsee: https://github.com/resendlabs/react-email/issues/881\n🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨\n`);
+        packageManager = 'npm';
+    }
     const spinner = (0, ora_1.default)('Installing dependencies...\n').start();
     (0, close_ora_on_sigint_1.closeOraOnSIGNIT)(spinner);
     shelljs_1.default.cd(path_1.default.join(constants_1.REACT_EMAIL_ROOT));

Alright fast followup: If you run npm install within the .react-email directory (even though we’re using pnpm), it’ll install packages into node_modules and the dev server will run.

I maintain that this is a pretty bad way to ship a dev server, but that’s a workaround that requires some manual steps. If you’re using a build tool like moon, this step can probably be automated.

I am also having this issue when using it though pnpm workspaces. For now the only work around I use is to go into the .react-email folder and do a yarn install. Then the email dev command works pretty well after this.