Warnings emitted on init when ran from within a non-installed package

[kraenhansen]

Environment

System:
    OS: macOS 11.6
    CPU: (8) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1068NG7 CPU @ 2.30GHz
    Memory: 983.04 MB / 32.00 GB
    Shell: 5.8 - /bin/zsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 14.16.0 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.16.0/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.11 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.16.0/bin/yarn
    npm: 7.19.1 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.16.0/bin/npm
    Watchman: 4.9.0 - /usr/local/bin/watchman
  Managers:
    CocoaPods: 1.10.1 - /usr/local/bin/pod
  SDKs:
    iOS SDK:
      Platforms: iOS 15.0, DriverKit 20.4, macOS 11.3, tvOS 15.0, watchOS 8.0
    Android SDK:
      Android NDK: 21.0.6113669
  IDEs:
    Android Studio: 2020.3 AI-203.7717.56.2031.7784292
    Xcode: 13.0/13A233 - /usr/bin/xcodebuild
  Languages:
    Java: 11.0.12 - /usr/local/opt/openjdk@11/bin/javac
    Python: 2.7.16 - /usr/bin/python
  npmPackages:
    @react-native-community/cli: Not Found
    react: Not Found
    react-native: Not Found
    react-native-macos: Not Found
  npmGlobalPackages:
    *react-native*: Not Found

Description

I want to react-native init a new app while my current working directory is a (a sub-directory of) another package.
But when I do this from within a package that has not yet been installed (or linked in the case of a Lerna mono-repo), the CLI emits confusing warnings (see example below).

I believe the root cause of these warnings is that an attempt is made to locate a root package and load its configuration (https://github.com/react-native-community/cli/blob/master/packages/cli/src/index.ts#L217) independently on what command is being executed.

The default behaviour of loadConfig is to find the nearest package.json up the tree: https://github.com/react-native-community/cli/blob/master/packages/cli/src/tools/config/index.ts#L61 which will find the enclosing package with uninstalled dependencies.

Ideally running react-native init shouldn't traverse my file system to determine a configuration.
Most likely the commands meant to be executed "detached" from a package, should have an early return code-path to make sure the configuration is never loaded when running those.

Reproducible Demo

# Create a package
cat << EOF > package.json
{
  "name": "wrong-root-package",
  "dependencies": {
    "unresolvable-package": "^1.0.0"
  }
}
EOF

# Try running the "react-native" CLI to initialize a new app
npx --yes react-native init MyTestApp

When running this, notice the warning emitted from the CLI:

warn Package unresolvable-package has been ignored because it contains invalid configuration. Reason: Cannot find module 'unresolvable-package/package.json'
Require stack:
- /Users/kraen.hansen/.npm/_npx/7930a8670f922cdb/node_modules/@react-native-community/cli/build/tools/config/resolveNodeModuleDir.js
- /Users/kraen.hansen/.npm/_npx/7930a8670f922cdb/node_modules/@react-native-community/cli/build/tools/releaseChecker/index.js
- /Users/kraen.hansen/.npm/_npx/7930a8670f922cdb/node_modules/@react-native-community/cli/build/commands/start/runServer.js
- /Users/kraen.hansen/.npm/_npx/7930a8670f922cdb/node_modules/@react-native-community/cli/build/commands/start/start.js
- /Users/kraen.hansen/.npm/_npx/7930a8670f922cdb/node_modules/@react-native-community/cli/build/commands/index.js
- /Users/kraen.hansen/.npm/_npx/7930a8670f922cdb/node_modules/@react-native-community/cli/build/index.js
- /Users/kraen.hansen/.npm/_npx/7930a8670f922cdb/node_modules/@react-native-community/cli/build/bin.js

Workaround

Users can place a package.json containing an empty object ({}) in the current working directory before executing the react-native init command.

[github-actions]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue in the past 3 months, so it has been marked as stale and it will be closed automatically if no further activity occurs in the next 7 days.

[kraenhansen]

This is still an issue.

[github-actions]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue in the past 3 months, so it has been marked as stale and it will be closed automatically if no further activity occurs in the next 7 days.

[kraenhansen]

This is still an issue.

[github-actions]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue in the past 3 months, so it has been marked as stale and it will be closed automatically if no further activity occurs in the next 7 days.

[kraenhansen]

This is still an issue.