Slack init command doesn't use packageManager from package.json

[malewis5]

Description

When running the slack init command the CLI doesn't use the packageManager defined by the user in package.json. This causes it to hang and reinstall all dependencies using npm.

Version

v3.5.1

OS Info

ProductName:            macOS
ProductVersion:         15.5
BuildVersion:           24F74
Darwin Kernel Version 24.5.0: Tue Apr 22 19:54:49 PDT 2025; root:xnu-11417.121.6~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000

Steps to reproduce:

Share the commands to run, source code, and project settings:

1. Run slack init -v in your project.
2. View logs to see npm is used.
3. Command takes a long time.

Expected result:

1. Slack CLI detects packageManager
2. Slack CLI runs commands using this packageManager
3. If @slack/cli-hooks are already installed the command takes milliseconds.

Actual result:

npm is used and the command takes very long

Requirements

• I've read and understood the Contributing guidelines and have done my best effort to follow them.
• I've read and agree to the Code of Conduct.
• I've searched for any related issues and avoided creating a duplicate issue.

[malewis5]

I'm not a go developer, but I created an example of what I think would fix this here: a8e1126

[mwbrooks]

Hi @malewis5 👋🏻

Thanks a bunch for taking the time to share the issue that you've found and the gist (a8e1126). You're a better Go developer than you give yourself credit 🙂

We never considered the packageManager field when adding npm support, but I think it's a very fair enhancement.

❓ From your gist, it looks like each packageManager can have their own command syntax to install, add, and list packages. So, we'll need to explicitly add support for each. In your gist, you've added yarn and pnpm. Are there other package managers that we should consider?

❓ I'm not very familiar with alternative package managers to npm. Do developers typically add the @pnpm/cli-utils package to their devDependencies or install it globally on their system?

[malewis5]

I'm developing a custom receiver for Bolt JavaScript and I added the cli-hooks as a dev dependency. This could be wrong, but I assume anyone using the receiver is using them.

The slack init command can still check for its installation and add it if not present. And in my case, switching to pnpm will make the install much faster.

In my experience, npm, pnpm and yarn are the most prevalent package managers. Bun is becoming popular as well.

Maybe log a warning if the developers package manager isn't supported? Or ask the developer to input their custom install command?