Reconsidering the removal the postinstall script
Author: alcuadradoCreated May 26, 2026Updated Aug 21, 2026
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Hi,
I'm creating this issue because I think this other one ( https://github.com/evanw/esbuild/issues/4085 ) may need to be reconsidered.
While I understand the points explained in the previous one, two things have changed:
- pnpm now doesn't install packages with postinall scripts by default, resulting on a failure, and not a warning.
- npm will incrementally move in the same direction: https://github.com/npm/rfcs/pull/868
I think this is specially important for people using esbuild as a transitive dependency, e.g. through tsx. As people installing it directly should have an easier time providing the required flag/settings.
Maybe a solution that would make the change simpler is splitting the package into two: esbuild (the cli), and esbuild-lib (the library).
Source: evanw/esbuild