pnpm

pnpm is an alternative to node package management tools like npm or yarn.

Its key value proposition is that it is efficient, making it 2x times faster than alternatives.

How does it achieve this?

When we use npm or yarn, for each project that uses lodash, we will have one copy per project of lodash on disk.

pnpm uses a content-addressable filesystem to store all files from all module directories on a disk. All files are saved in a single place on disk. When packages are installed, their files are hard linked from that single place - consuming no extra disk space.

Usage

It resembles usage for npm, making the learning curve almost nil. pnpx is the alternative for npx as well. Sweet.

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

The potential file storage space makes this a very inviting change. I for sure like the sound of saving time installing packages and saving space on my local computer (stares at number of js projects..).

Testing it out

I ran these commands in my project directory.

$ curl -L https://pnpm.js.org/pnpm.js | node - add --global pnpm $ rm -rf node_modules $ rm package-lock.json $ pnpm install Packages: +2002 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Packages are hard linked from the content-addressable store to the virtual store. Content-addressable store is at: /Users/rongying/.pnpm-store/v3 Virtual store is at: node_modules/.pnpm Downloading registry.npmjs.org/gifwrap/0.9.2: 5.89 MB/5.89 MB, done Downloading registry.npmjs.org/image-q/1.1.1: 9.32 MB/9.32 MB, done Progress: resolved 1994, reused 0, downloaded 1994, added 2002, done

A new file pnpm-lock.yaml was created.

Although I ran into some problems as gatsby couldn't resolve some packages, there was a convenient package to resolve this. So porting from npm to pnpm does seem pretty doable.

$ pnpm i gatsby-plugin-pnpm $ pnpm run start $ pnpm run build

Like magic, I was able to run start and build locally. It will take some getting used to, but this sounds like a promising tool! (Even though pnpm has been around since 2017 :gasp:)

pnpm on Netlify

Tried and tested. Works out of the box when I changed the build command to pnpm run build. Not super necessary because the install was using npm anyway.