corepack project install command? #505

Currently, there's no standardized way to install dependencies for projects using different package managers without prior knowledge of the specific manager used. This can complicate CI/CD pipelines, development scripts, and workflows for developers working across multiple projects.

It would be nice to be able to write a script that will do npm install / pnpm install / yarn install on arbitrary packages, without having to know in advance what their packageManager field says.

Proposal - a --project parameter added to the install command:

corepack install --project

This would change install to install the project/node_modules rather than the package manager itself. (Or could be a separate command or something).

For a project with "packageManager": "pnpm@9.4.0" the corepack install --project command would be equivalent to running

corepack enable
pnpm install

(called via a subshell)

Or for a project with "packageManager": "npm@10.1.0" this would be equivalent to

corepack enable
npm install

Similar for yarn, etc.

Benefits

• Simplifies shared code for CI/CD pipelines like GitHub Actions
• Reduces boilerplate in build scripts
• Improves developer experience when working with multiple projects

Other notes:

• could/should probably have a fallback behaviour when no packageManager is present, of using npm, or looking for lockfiles, or just erroring
• potential follow-on: allow passing extra args after a -- like corepack install --project -- --no-frozend-lockfile (though this would no longer really be generic across package managers I guess)
• potential follow-on: similar install-package functionality like corepack add left-pad

Not sure if this has been asked before but I couldn't find it in the issues.