Allow simpler configuration for reusing actions and workflows

[nickserv]

Description:
Ideally, I'd like the default configuration of this action to "just work" regardless of the package manager, lockfile, and other decisions made by a repository, so I can reuse it in composed actions and workflows. Currently, there isn't a straightforward way to enable caching without hard coding a specific package manager, and using pnpm requires adding different steps before this action, making its usage inconsistent with npm and yarn users.

I am aware of these related issues, but I wanted to make an issue dedicated to discussing how to achieve this goal at a higher level:

• Corepack Support #531
• Automatic discovery of version matching package.json engines #467
• feature request: cache: 'auto' #306

Justification:
As a real world example, I have a GitHub template repository that sets up some Node.js tools with a package.json file. To keep it beginner friendly and flexible, I'm intentionally not including lockfiles for any specific package manager. I considered setting up GitHub Actions so generated repositories would have a good CI setup, however there's not a single configuration I could enable for this action that would work with npm, yarn, and pnpm users.

Other CI services solve this problem by following convention over configuration. For example, Travis CI runs yarn instead of npm install when there is a yarn.lock.

Are you willing to submit a PR?

So far, I'd suggest that we depend on preferred-pm for more implicit package manager selection logic and use it to install yarn or pnpm dynamically (optionally with corepack). If there's consensus on this or another solution, I may try to submit a PR, though it may depend on PRs for the related issues.

[dmitry-shibanov]

Hello @nickmccurdy. Thank you for your report. We'll investigate the feature request.

[dsame]

Hello @nickmccurdy can you please clarify how this issue differ from this one #306 ? Namely what does the term "simpler configuration" includes? Or, in other words, what inputs besides cache: 'auto' you would like to inherit from the environment?

[dsame]

@nickmccurdy i am closing the issue due to inactivity for a long time, but please feel free to reopen it or create another one if the problem still exists