Bower vs Yarn

Overview

Bower

Stacks6.4K

Followers4.5K

Votes927

GitHub Stars14.9K

Forks1.8K

Yarn

Stacks28.2K

Followers13.5K

Votes151

GitHub Stars41.5K

Forks2.7K

Bower vs Yarn: What are the differences?

Difference Between Bower and Yarn

Bower and Yarn are both package managers used in web development, but they have some key differences.

Dependency Resolution: Bower uses a flat dependency resolution method, which means that all packages are installed in the same folder. This can lead to conflicts when different packages rely on different versions of the same dependency. Yarn, on the other hand, uses a hierarchical dependency resolution approach, which allows for better control over the dependencies and avoids version conflicts.
Performance: Yarn is known for its superior performance compared to Bower. Yarn uses parallel installation, caching, and other optimization techniques to make the installation and dependency management process faster. Bower, on the other hand, may take longer to install packages and resolve dependencies, especially in larger projects.
Lockfile Generation: Yarn generates a yarn.lock file that locks down the exact versions of dependencies used in a project, ensuring consistency across different environments. Bower does not have a built-in lockfile mechanism, which can make it harder to reproduce the exact dependency versions used in a project.
Registry: Bower uses the Bower registry as the default package source, which contains a wide range of front-end libraries and frameworks. Yarn, on the other hand, uses the npm registry as its default package source, which has a much larger collection of packages, including both front-end and server-side libraries.
Automation and Scripts: Yarn includes a built-in task runner called "npm-scripts," which allows developers to define and run custom scripts easily. Bower does not have a built-in task runner or script automation system but can be integrated with other tools like Gulp or Grunt for similar functionality.
Community and Support: Yarn has gained significant popularity and has a large and active community of developers. It is continually maintained and supported by Facebook, which also uses it in their projects. Bower, on the other hand, has seen a decline in popularity in recent years, and its community and support may not be as robust as Yarn's.

In Summary, Bower and Yarn differ in their dependency resolution methods, performance, lockfile generation, package sources, automation and script capabilities, and community and support. Yarn generally provides better performance, more advanced features, and a larger community for web developers.

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Advice on Bower, Yarn

StackShare

Apr 23, 2019

Needs adviceon

Node.js

npm

Yarn

From a StackShare Community member: “I’m a freelance web developer (I mostly use Node.js) and for future projects I’m debating between npm or Yarn as my default package manager. I’m a minimalist so I hate installing software if I don’t need to- in this case that would be Yarn. For those who made the switch from npm to Yarn, what benefits have you noticed? For those who stuck with npm, are you happy you with it?"

294k views294k

Comments

zen-li

Apr 24, 2019

Reviewon

Yarn

p.s.

I am not sure about the performance of the latest version of npm, whether it is different from my understanding of it below. Because I use npm very rarely when I had the following knowledge.

------⏬

I use Yarn because, first, yarn is the first tool to lock the version. Second, although npm also supports the lock version, when you use npm to lock the version, and then use package-lock.json on other systems, package-lock.json Will be modified. You understand what I mean, when you deploy projects based on Git...

250k views250k

Comments

Oleksandr

Senior Software Engineer at joyn

Dec 7, 2019

Decided

As we have to build the application for many different TV platforms we want to split the application logic from the device/platform specific code. Previously we had different repositories and it was very hard to keep the development process when changes were done in multiple repositories, as we had to synchronize code reviews as well as merging and then updating the dependencies of projects. This issues would be even more critical when building the project from scratch what we did at Joyn. Therefor to keep all code in one place, at the same time keeping in separated in different modules we decided to give a try to monorepo. First we tried out lerna which was fine at the beginning, but later along the way we had issues with adding new dependencies which came out of the blue and were not easy to fix. Next round of evolution was yarn workspaces, we are still using it and are pretty happy with dev experience it provides. And one more advantage we got when switched to yarn workspaces that we also switched from npm to yarn what improved the state of the lock file a lot, because with npm package-lock file was updated every time you run npm install, frequent updates of package-lock file were causing very often merge conflicts. So right now we not just having faster dependencies installation time but also no conflicts coming from lock file.

310k views310k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Bower	Yarn
Bower is a package manager for the web. It offers a generic, unopinionated solution to the problem of front-end package management, while exposing the package dependency model via an API that can be consumed by a more opinionated build stack. There are no system wide dependencies, no dependencies are shared between different apps, and the dependency tree is flat.	Yarn caches every package it downloads so it never needs to again. It also parallelizes operations to maximize resource utilization so install times are faster than ever.
Bower operates at a lower level than previous attempts at client-side package management – such as Jam, Volo, or Ender. These managers could consume Bower as a dependency.;Bower's aim is simply to install packages, resolve dependencies from a bower.json, check versions, and then provide an API which reports on these things. Nothing more. This is a major diversion from past attempts at browser package management.;Bower offers a generic, unopinionated solution to the problem of package management, while exposing an API that can be consumed by a more opinionated build stack.	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars 14.9K	GitHub Stars 41.5K
GitHub Forks 1.8K	GitHub Forks 2.7K
Stacks 6.4K	Stacks 28.2K
Followers 4.5K	Followers 13.5K
Votes 927	Votes 151
Pros & Cons
Pros 483 Package management 214 Open source 142 Simple 53 Great for for project dependencies injection 27 Web components with Meteor Cons 2 Deprecated 1 Front end only	Pros 85 Incredibly fast 22 Easy to use 13 Open Source 11 Can install any npm package 8 Works where npm fails Cons 16 Facebook 7 Sends data to facebook 4 Should be installed separately 3 Cannot publish to registry other than npm
Integrations
No integrations available	JavaScript npm

What are some alternatives to Bower, Yarn?

Meteor

A Meteor application is a mix of JavaScript that runs inside a client web browser, JavaScript that runs on the Meteor server inside a Node.js container, and all the supporting HTML fragments, CSS rules, and static assets.

npm

npm is the command-line interface to the npm ecosystem. It is battle-tested, surprisingly flexible, and used by hundreds of thousands of JavaScript developers every day.

Elm

Writing HTML apps is super easy with elm-lang/html. Not only does it render extremely fast, it also quietly guides you towards well-architected code.

RequireJS

RequireJS loads plain JavaScript files as well as more defined modules. It is optimized for in-browser use, including in a Web Worker, but it can be used in other JavaScript environments, like Rhino and Node. It implements the Asynchronous Module API. Using a modular script loader like RequireJS will improve the speed and quality of your code.

Browserify

Browserify lets you require('modules') in the browser by bundling up all of your dependencies.

Julia

Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language for technical computing, with syntax that is familiar to users of other technical computing environments. It provides a sophisticated compiler, distributed parallel execution, numerical accuracy, and an extensive mathematical function library.

Racket

It is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language based on the Scheme dialect of Lisp. It is designed to be a platform for programming language design and implementation. It is also used for scripting, computer science education, and research.

Component

Component's philosophy is the UNIX philosophy of the web - to create a platform for small, reusable components that consist of JS, CSS, HTML, images, fonts, etc. With its well-defined specs, using Component means not worrying about most frontend problems such as package management, publishing components to a registry, or creating a custom build process for every single app.

PureScript

A small strongly typed programming language with expressive types that compiles to JavaScript, written in and inspired by Haskell.

Composer

It is a tool for dependency management in PHP. It allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on and it will manage (install/update) them for you.

Related Comparisons

Bower vs Yarn: What are the differences?

Difference Between Bower and Yarn

Bower and Yarn are both package managers used in web development, but they have some key differences.

Dependency Resolution: Bower uses a flat dependency resolution method, which means that all packages are installed in the same folder. This can lead to conflicts when different packages rely on different versions of the same dependency. Yarn, on the other hand, uses a hierarchical dependency resolution approach, which allows for better control over the dependencies and avoids version conflicts.
Performance: Yarn is known for its superior performance compared to Bower. Yarn uses parallel installation, caching, and other optimization techniques to make the installation and dependency management process faster. Bower, on the other hand, may take longer to install packages and resolve dependencies, especially in larger projects.
Lockfile Generation: Yarn generates a yarn.lock file that locks down the exact versions of dependencies used in a project, ensuring consistency across different environments. Bower does not have a built-in lockfile mechanism, which can make it harder to reproduce the exact dependency versions used in a project.
Registry: Bower uses the Bower registry as the default package source, which contains a wide range of front-end libraries and frameworks. Yarn, on the other hand, uses the npm registry as its default package source, which has a much larger collection of packages, including both front-end and server-side libraries.
Automation and Scripts: Yarn includes a built-in task runner called "npm-scripts," which allows developers to define and run custom scripts easily. Bower does not have a built-in task runner or script automation system but can be integrated with other tools like Gulp or Grunt for similar functionality.
Community and Support: Yarn has gained significant popularity and has a large and active community of developers. It is continually maintained and supported by Facebook, which also uses it in their projects. Bower, on the other hand, has seen a decline in popularity in recent years, and its community and support may not be as robust as Yarn's.

Bower vs Yarn

Overview

Bower vs Yarn: What are the differences?