📝 Add env variable for deploying to Vercel

[ahaywood]

Fixes #10100

When you create a fresh install of Redwood and then try deploying to Vercel, it will error out unless you add the following environmental variable:

ENABLE_EXPERIMENTAL_COREPACK=1

This PR adds documentation for deploying to Vercel.

[thedavidprice]

I'll defer to @ahaywood and @jtoar here, but this seems like a big enough break from the previous flow to warrant giving more explicit "next step" instructions within the rw setup deploy vercel output:
https://github.com/redwoodjs/redwood/blob/main/packages/cli/src/commands/setup/deploy/providers/vercel.js

Also, it seems like this change would also be required across all deploy providers. Has there been any other QA sanity checks for new projects on Netlify, Render, or others?

[jtoar]

@thedavidprice yes, I've done the QA sanity checks.

I don't want to waste an hour digging up links but here's what I found in 5 minutes. (More like 30 mins now.) FWIW all other deploy providers don't need you to set an env var like this. Netlify and Coherence just work, and I've made the relevant PRs for Render and Flightcontrol (and Docker):

• render feat(CLI): add check node version middleware, rm .nvmrc, yarn engines #9728
• flightcontrol fix(deploy): handle server file #10061
• docker fix(docker): corepack permissions fix and style updates #9976

The repos in deploy target CI have all been using corepack for months. E.g. Netlify deploy logs:

Coherence just works because their version of Nixpacks; Netlify may use a similar strategy. Flightcontrol does. Coherence deploy logs:

[thedavidprice]

Great! Thank you for taking time to catch me up. "yes, I've done the QA sanity checks"... would have been a good enough answer, fwiw 😅

Since you've done the work, it makes me think we should run this PR by the Vercel team to see if they'd be up for handling this internally via build config. Thoughts? (Or maybe you've already done that, too.)

[thedavidprice]

Option per @styfle (via DM)

You could add vercel.json to your project

{
  "build": {
    "env": { 
      "ENABLE_EXPERIMENTAL_COREPACK": "1"
    }
  }
}

I like adding this as a step in the setup command. Thoughts either way @ahaywood and @jtoar?

Reference:
https://vercel.com/docs/projects/project-configuration

[styfle]

Note that this may stop working with future versions of Node.js if this PR gets merged:

• deps: remove corepack nodejs/node#51981

Although the env var might not be needed at all if this other PR gets merged:

• enable corepack by default nodejs/node#50963
• build: enable yarn and pnpm Corepack binaries by default nodejs/node#51886

Feel free to add 👍 or 👎 to the linked PRs above.

[jtoar]

Thanks @styfle—I added a lot of both 👍s and 👎s to different comments. 😅

@thedavidprice I'd prefer if the setup command just added that file as well yeah.

[ahaywood]

Closing since this is resolved with the setup command #10355