create-tsrouter-app scaffold fails out of the box with pnpm on Linux #395

Which project does this relate to?

Router

Describe the bug

Running pnpm install and pnpm dev on a freshly scaffolded TanStack Start project fails immediately without any modifications.

Your Example Website or App

none

Steps to Reproduce the Bug or Issue

Steps to reproduce

1. Scaffold a new project using the TanStack Start template
2. pnpm install
3. pnpm dev

Expected behavior

Expected behavior

A freshly scaffolded project should work after pnpm install with no manual fixes required.

Screenshots or Videos

No response

Platform

Environment

Additional context

First error: esbuild postinstall fails with:

Error: Expected "0.27.3" but got ""

The scaffold pins esbuild@0.27.3 directly in dependencies, which has a broken postinstall script under Node 22.

Second error (after removing esbuild from dependencies and letting it be a transitive dep): lightningcss native binary missing:

Error: Cannot find module '../lightningcss.linux-x64-gnu.node'

pnpm's strict symlinking means the lightningcss-linux-x64-gnu optional dependency binary never gets linked into lightningcss's node/ directory.