[Sankozi]

This is literally not possible.

If you have local dependency repo and dependency manifest, during the build, you can either:

1. Check if local repo is in sync - correct build, takes more time

2. Skip the check - risky build, but fast

If the dependencies are only in the cache directory, you can have both - correct and fast builds.

[jampekka]

I don't follow. In pnpm there's a global cache at ~/.pnpm with versioned packages and node_modules has symlinks to those. Dependencies are defined in package.json transitive dependencies are versioned and SHA512-hashed in pnpm-lock.yaml.

E.g.

  $ ls -l ./node_modules/better-sqlite3
  ... node_modules/better-sqlite3 -> .pnpm/better-sqlite3@12.4.1/node_modules/better-sqlite3

[Sankozi]

You still need to have those symlinks checked. For example you switch branch to one with updated package.json, now you need either to check symlinks or you risk to have incorrect build.

Introducing a directory that needs to stay in sync with dependency manifest will always lead to such problems. It is good that Python developers do not want to repeat such mistake.