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Lerna vs pnpm: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will compare Lerna and pnpm to understand their key differences.

  1. Installation and Package Management: Lerna is a tool for managing JavaScript projects with multiple packages, while pnpm is a package manager for JavaScript projects. Lerna helps with managing the versioning and dependency linking of packages within a project, while pnpm provides a fast and efficient package installation and management system.

  2. Monorepo Support: Lerna is primarily focused on managing monorepos, where multiple packages are stored in a single repository. It allows for versioning, releasing, and managing the inter-package dependencies within a monorepo. On the other hand, pnpm supports both monorepos and single-package projects. It offers efficient disk space utilization by storing dependencies in a single global store, regardless of the number of projects.

  3. Dependency Deduplication: Lerna does not have built-in dependency deduplication. Each package in the monorepo can have its own set of dependencies, resulting in possible duplication of dependencies across packages. On the contrary, pnpm implements dependency deduplication, where common dependencies are shared across projects, reducing the disk space usage.

  4. Concurrency and Speed: Lerna operates sequentially when running commands or scripts across multiple packages. This can lead to slower execution times, especially in larger monorepo projects. In contrast, pnpm takes advantage of parallel execution, enabling faster installation and performance by leveraging parallelization.

  5. Offline Support: Lerna does not provide built-in offline support for package installation. It requires an internet connection to download and install packages. On the other hand, pnpm has offline support, allowing developers to install packages even without an internet connection. It caches the downloaded packages locally, facilitating offline installations and ensuring consistent builds.

  6. Integration and Ecosystem: Lerna integrates well with other tools commonly used in the JavaScript ecosystem, such as npm, Yarn, and Babel. It can work alongside these tools to provide a comprehensive package management solution. pnpm, on the other hand, is designed as an alternative to npm and Yarn, providing its own package management system while being compatible with the npm ecosystem.

In summary, Lerna is primarily focused on managing monorepos and offers versioning and dependency linking, whereas pnpm provides efficient package installation, dependency deduplication, parallel execution, offline support, and compatibility with the npm ecosystem.

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Pros of Lerna
Pros of pnpm
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    • 4
      Fast
    • 3
      Uses less disk space
    • 2
      Works as a Node.js package manager
    • 1
      Has CLI auto-completion
    • 1
      Has a nice UI

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    What is Lerna?

    It is a popular and widely used package written in JavaScript. It optimizes the workflow around managing multi-package repositories with git and npm.

    What is pnpm?

    It 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.

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    What companies use Lerna?
    What companies use pnpm?
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    What tools integrate with Lerna?
    What tools integrate with pnpm?
    What are some alternatives to Lerna and pnpm?
    Yarn
    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.
    Apache Maven
    Maven allows a project to build using its project object model (POM) and a set of plugins that are shared by all projects using Maven, providing a uniform build system. Once you familiarize yourself with how one Maven project builds you automatically know how all Maven projects build saving you immense amounts of time when trying to navigate many projects.
    Bit
    It is open source tool that helps you easily publish and manage reusable components. It help teams scale shared components to hundreds and even thousands of components, while eliminating the overhead around this process.
    Builder
    It is the first and only visual headless CMS with full drag and drop editing. It supports many frameworks like Angular, Vue, React, Preact etc. Convert Figma designs into clean code using Visual Copilot, leveraging AI into your workflow.
    Bazel
    Bazel is a build tool that builds code quickly and reliably. It is used to build the majority of Google's software, and thus it has been designed to handle build problems present in Google's development environment.
    See all alternatives