pnpm

What is pnpm?

pnpm is a fast, disk space efficient package manager for JavaScript that works with the npm and Yarn registries. It uses hard links and symlinks to save disk space and improve installation speed. It also has a strict node_modules structure that helps to avoid issues with phantom dependencies.

What are pnpm's main functionalities?

Installing packages

Installs the lodash package into your project. This is similar to npm install or yarn add.

pnpm install lodash

Creating a new project

Initializes a new package.json file for your project, similar to npm init or yarn init.

pnpm init

Adding a package to dependencies

Adds the react package to your project's dependencies, similar to npm install react --save or yarn add react.

pnpm add react

Adding a package to devDependencies

Adds the typescript package to your project's devDependencies, similar to npm install typescript --save-dev or yarn add typescript --dev.

pnpm add --save-dev typescript

Updating packages

Updates all the packages in your project to their latest versions based on the specified ranges in package.json, similar to npm update or yarn upgrade.

pnpm update

Running scripts

Runs the script named 'build' specified in your package.json, similar to npm run build or yarn run build.

pnpm run build

Other packages similar to pnpm

npm

npm is the default package manager for Node.js and is the most widely used. It has a large ecosystem and is well-supported, but it can be slower and use more disk space compared to pnpm.

yarn

Yarn is a package manager that was created by Facebook to address some of npm's shortcomings. It introduced lockfiles and deterministic installations. Yarn is faster than npm but can still use more disk space compared to pnpm.

README

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Fast, disk space efficient package manager:

• Fast. Up to 2x faster than the alternatives (see benchmark).
• Efficient. Files inside node_modules are linked from a single content-addressable storage.
• Great for monorepos.
• Strict. A package can access only dependencies that are specified in its package.json.
• Deterministic. Has a lockfile called pnpm-lock.yaml.
• Works as a Node.js version manager. See pnpm env use.
• Works everywhere. Supports Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• Battle-tested. Used in production by teams of all sizes since 2016.
• See the full feature comparison with npm and Yarn.

To quote the Rush team:

Microsoft uses pnpm in Rush repos with hundreds of projects and hundreds of PRs per day, and we’ve found it to be very fast and reliable.

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Background

pnpm uses a content-addressable filesystem to store all files from all module directories on a disk. When using npm, if you have 100 projects using lodash, you will have 100 copies of lodash on disk. With pnpm, lodash will be stored in a content-addressable storage, so:

1. If you depend on different versions of lodash, only the files that differ are added to the store. If lodash has 100 files, and a new version has a change only in one of those files, pnpm update will only add 1 new file to the storage.
2. All the files are saved in a single place on the disk. When packages are installed, their files are linked from that single place consuming no additional disk space. Linking is performed using either hard-links or reflinks (copy-on-write).

As a result, you save gigabytes of space on your disk and you have a lot faster installations! If you'd like more details about the unique node_modules structure that pnpm creates and why it works fine with the Node.js ecosystem, read this small article: Flat node_modules is not the only way.

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Installation

For installation options visit our website.

Usage

Just use pnpm in place of npm/Yarn. E.g., install dependencies via:

pnpm install

For more advanced usage, read pnpm CLI on our website, or run pnpm help.

Benchmark

pnpm is up to 2x faster than npm and Yarn classic. See all benchmarks here.

Benchmarks on an app with lots of dependencies:

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License

MIT