Superchain: missing permissions for installation of global packages

[Obirah]

Describe the bug

When using the Superchain image (1-buster-slim-node18 in my case) in GitLab CI and trying to install global NPM packages (e.g. npm i -g pnpm), the build fails with a permission denied error indicating that the superchain user has no permissions to write to /usr/lib/node_modules.

Expected Behavior

It should be possible to install global NPM packages out-of-the-box.

Current Behavior

Installing a global NPM package fails with a permission denied error.

Reproduction Steps

Run a GitLab CI job with the Superchain image and try to install a global package.

Possible Solution

Give the sufficient permissions to the superchain user (or add pnpm to the default tools 😉).

Additional Information/Context

Current workaround is to change the installation directory for global packages before installing them:

mkdir ~/npm-global
npm config set prefix '~/npm-global'
export PATH=~/npm-global/bin:$PATH
npm i -g pnpm

SDK version used

1-buster-slim-node18

Environment details (OS name and version, etc.)

1-buster-slim-node18 on GitLab CI

[antoniordz96]

Thanks for the tip. Would be nice to see pnpm as a default tool in this image or ability to install global modules

[mrgrain]

We have sudo available in superchain:

sudo npm i -g pnpm

[github-actions]

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