pnpm shim <cmd>
Added in: v12.0.0-rc.6 (pnpm v12 only)
Manage project-aware command shims.
A shim created by this command has no global installation behind it. It exists only to let the project you are standing in decide what runs: pnpm shim add yarn links a yarn command that runs whatever version the current project pins, and provisions that version on demand. On a machine that has only pnpm, that is what makes yarn work inside a Yarn project.
Creating a shim is always deliberate — nothing writes one as a side effect of pnpm setup or an install, because a shim shadows whatever the rest of your PATH resolved before it.
Comandi
add
pnpm shim add <pkg>...
Links a shim for every bin of each package into the global bin directory (pnpm bin -g), and records the package in the globalShims setting so the shims actually dispatch.
pnpm shim add yarn
The package managers pnpm provisions — npm, yarn, bun — need no lookup: their bins are known up front, aliases included (yarn and yarnpkg, npm and npx). For any other package, the bins are read from the package's published manifest; a package that publishes no bin fails with ERR_PNPM_SHIM_NO_BINS.
A bin that is already in the global bin directory belongs to something else — a globally installed package, or another package's shim — so the command refuses with ERR_PNPM_SHIM_BIN_CONFLICT rather than taking a working command away.
Adding a shim while globalShims: false is set fails with ERR_PNPM_SHIMS_DISABLED: that setting turns every project-aware shim off, so the shim would sit on PATH doing nothing.
rm
pnpm shim rm <pkg>...
Aliases: remove, uninstall
Removes the package's shims and the globalShims entry that add recorded for it.
ls
pnpm shim ls
Alias: list
Lists every shim in the global bin directory with the policy governing it:
yarn (auto): yarn, yarnpkg
How a version is chosen
A shim resolves the project you are standing in, walking up from the current working directory:
- For a package manager, the project's
packageManagerordevEngines.packageManagerpin decides the version, and pnpm provisions it. The pin outranks a copy of that package manager installed globally, because it is the project's own statement of what installs it. - For any other package, the project's
node_modules/.bin/<name>is used.
If nothing in the project provides the command, the globally installed version runs — a shim never makes a command fail merely because dispatch did not apply.
The trust rules of project-aware global bins apply here too: an npm-published package manager is verified against npm's signature for its exact version and switches without asking, while Bun and Yarn 6 arrive as checksum-pinned platform archives and go through the confirmation prompt. That answer is remembered per project and per binary, so moving the project's pin to another version asks again.