It seems like this problem happens when trying to run transformations defined in different project (I have them in other repo published as npm, so I can reuse in all projects) registerStackTransformation fails with following exception. how come that stack is not initialized in my index.ts when console.log(pulumi.getStack()) returns correct stack name? Error: The root stack resource was referenced before it was initialized.         at Object.registerStackTransformation (..... \node_modules\@pulumi\pulumi\runtime\stack.js:211:15)

Are you calling registerStackTransformation in the other project? It's fine to define the transforming function in the other project, but I think you need to call registerStackTransformation in the project that defines the stack.

yeah. in other project and I can't say I like the idea to copy those registers to all projects and instruct every developer to use same registers in every project instead of just calling registerCommonTransforms() or smth like that in index.ts

Calling the function from index.ts should be fine, I think. So long as the stack context is that of the calling project, it should be all good. That is, in order to use the transformations in project A, the registerCommonTransforms() function defined in project B needs to be exported (and probably not from its index.ts, since you won't want to load that in project A), and called from project A.

that's pretty much what I was trying to do. register function exported by shared project and that's what was causing the problem

Unless it's exported with a reference to its "source" project, that should be fine.

well, its referenced as npm package

I haven't done it that way. If you import from the file system instead of a package, does it work? I've only ever imported from the filesystem (I use a monorepo).

importing from FS works. with npm even referencing npm locally doesn't work. in fact there's an open issue on it in different context https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi/issues/4669