PNPM

pnpm is a package manager for Node.js and the JavaScript ecosystem. It serves as an alternative to npm and Yarn, prioritizing speed and disk space efficiency while providing a deterministic installation experience.

A central feature of pnpm is its content-addressable store. Packages are downloaded once into a global store (typically under the user’s home directory) and then linked into projects using a combination of hard links and symbolic links. This design allows multiple projects to share the same package files, greatly reducing disk usage and speeding up installations, especially in environments with many projects or monorepos.

pnpm uses a lockfile, pnpm-lock.yaml, to ensure reproducible installs. It resolves dependencies in a consistent manner and creates a unique, deterministic node_modules layout. Unlike some other package managers, pnpm’s layout relies on symlinks to point at the shared store, which can help avoid duplication and improve install reliability.

Workspaces are supported natively, enabling efficient management of monorepos. With pnpm workspaces, multiple packages can be developed and installed together, with inter-package dependencies resolved within the workspace.

In use, pnpm accepts most npm-compatible commands, such as install, add, remove, and update, and relies on the npm registry for package data. It also offers caching and offline installation capabilities, contributing to faster setup times and more predictable builds. Overall, pnpm aims to provide fast, scalable package management with a focus on performance and reproducibility.