Difference between engines, devEngines, useNodeVersion and nodeVersion

[mkarajohn]

As a new user of pnpm, coming from a simple setup of only having an engines field in package.json where I was defining my node and npm version, suddenly seeing 4 different things that can seemingly be used for the same thing, defined in different places (some in package.json some in pnpm-workspace.yaml) is very confusing.

If someone can give me a brief explanation where I should use each of them I would appreciate that. Or, if that's too much, then a simple suggestion like "Just use devEngines" for my setup, which is a vanilla pnpm monorepo with multiple applications and some internal packages to use among those applications, would suffice.

Thank you!

ps. bonus question:

Is there a way to automatically update all packageManager fields from an older version of pnpm to the one that is currently used? e.g. I just setup my stuff yesterday, with pnpm 10.13, and today I upgraded to 10.14. All my package.json are left with 10.13, which means either I have to manually update them every time this happens, or I can delete it completely from non-workspace-root package.json and then actively delete the field from new packages every time I do npm init

[zkochan]

You should use the devEngined.runtime as it is a new standard field that will be used by other package managers too.

Is there a way to automatically update all packageManager fields from an older version of pnpm to the one that is currently used? e.g. I just setup my stuff yesterday, with pnpm 10.13, and today I upgraded to 10.14. All my package.json are left with 10.13, which means either I have to manually update them every time this happens, or I can delete it completely from non-workspace-root package.json and then actively delete the field from new packages every time I do npm init

No, there is no way to do it automatically.

[mkarajohn]

Thanks. It is "safe" to delete packageManager from every package.json apart the one in the monorepo root, right?

[zkochan]

right