pnpm

Fast, disk space efficient package manager

Features:

• Fast. As fast as npm and Yarn.
• Efficient. One version of a package is saved only ever once on a disk.
• Deterministic. Has a lockfile called shrinkwrap.yaml.
• Strict. A package can access only dependencies that are specified in its package.json.
• Works everywhere. Works on Windows, Linux and OS X.
• Aliases. Install different versions of the same package or import it using a different name.

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Table of Contents

• Background
• Install
• Usage
  • pnpm CLI
  • pnpx CLI
  • Configuring
  • Hooks
  • Aliases
• Benchmark
• Limitations
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Support
• Awesome list
• Recipes
  • Continuous Integration
• Advanced
  • About the package store
  • Symlinked node_modules structure
  • How peers are resolved
• Contributing

Background

pnpm uses hard links and symlinks to save one version of a module only ever once on a disk. When using npm or Yarn for example, if you have 100 projects using the same version of lodash, you will have 100 copies of lodash on disk. With pnpm, lodash will be saved in a single place on the disk and a hard link will put it into the node_modules where it should be installed.

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: Why should we use pnpm?

Install

Using a standalone script:

curl -L https://unpkg.com/@pnpm/self-installer | node

Via npm:

npm install -g pnpm

Once you first installed pnpm, you can upgrade it using pnpm:

pnpm install -g pnpm

Do you wanna use pnpm on CI servers? See: Continuous Integration.

Usage

pnpm CLI

Just use pnpm in place of npm. For instance, to install run:

pnpm install lodash

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

For using the programmatic API, use pnpm's engine: supi.

pnpx CLI

npm has a great package runner called npx. pnpm offers the same tool via the pnpx command. The only difference is that pnpx uses pnpm for installing packages.

The following command installs a temporary create-react-app and calls it, without polluting global installs or requiring more than one step!

pnpx create-react-app my-cool-new-app

Benchmark

pnpm is faster than npm and Yarn. See this benchmark which compares the three package managers on different types of applications.

Here are the benchmarks on a React app:

Support

• Stack Overflow
• Gitter chat
• Twitter

License

MIT