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Generate projects with engine-strict by default #31271
Description
Command
new
Description
It is quite easy to install a package incompatible with the current Node runtime. NPM only emits a warning by default which is easily overlooked. Once the package is installed, running it may result in unpredictable behavior, or might even work in the short term and then suddenly fail seemingly randomly in the future due to unrelated updates or changes to executed code paths which suddenly become incompatible with the currently installed Node version.
Describe the solution you'd like
New projects should generate an .npmrc with engine-strict=true by default when using NPM as the package manager.
https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v11/using-npm/config#engine-strict
This opts-in to a stricter environment which emits a hard error when installing a package incompatible with the current Node environment.
Yarn and pnpm already use the strict behavior by default, so this aligns with the broader direction of the package manager ecosystem.
Spin off from #30547.
Activity
alan-agius4 commentedon Oct 27, 2026
Following some internal discussion, we've decided not to proceed with generating an
.npmrcfile withengine-strict=truein new workspaces. This scenario doesn't come up frequently enough in practice to justify adding an extra configuration file to every newly generated project, which we would like to avoid.Closing as not planned.