Materialize linked snapshot dependencies inside pacquet's virtual-store slots so packages remain self-contained when those slots live outside the project.
Model each resolved link target as a leaf in the TypeScript and Rust dependency graphs. This makes a changed link target affect the recursively computed slot hash of every ancestor while allowing projects that resolve to the same target to keep sharing a slot. Keep the graph extension limited to global-virtual-store hashing so side-effects-cache keys retain their existing behavior.
Thread optional-dependency selection through pacquet's slot materialization and inspect warm slots before reuse. This removes stale optional links under --no-optional and restores them when optional dependencies are enabled again. Preserve transitive optional dependencies during partial installs, where a narrowed direct dependency-group selection does not express --no-optional intent.
Pin the normalization contract with a fixture consumed by both stacks, covering empty targets, parent segments, and Windows drive-letter casing and asserting the final slot hash as well as each synthetic node. Treat missing, dangling, and non-directory expected optional children as a reuse mismatch, detect dangling unexpected entries too, and surface other metadata errors. Run optional-child scans only after the slot passes the cheaper existence and integrity checks.
Zoltan Kochan