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Bower vs Yarn vs npm: What are the differences?

Introduction

In modern web development, package managers play a crucial role in managing project dependencies. Bower, Yarn, and npm are three popular package managers that facilitate the installation and management of external libraries and frameworks. Although they serve similar purposes, there are key differences between Bower, Yarn, and npm that make them unique in their own way.

  1. Dependency resolution: One of the key differences between Bower, Yarn, and npm lies in their approach to dependency resolution. Bower resolves dependencies through flat resolution, which means that all dependencies are stored in a single directory. On the other hand, Yarn and npm use nested dependency resolution, where each dependency is stored in a separate directory within the project. This allows for better control and isolation of dependencies.

  2. Lockfile: Yarn and npm both generate a lockfile, which is a JSON file that ensures consistent and deterministic installs across different machines. The lockfile keeps a record of the specific versions and dependencies that were installed, preventing any unexpected changes during subsequent installations. Bower, however, does not provide a built-in lockfile mechanism, which can sometimes lead to inconsistent installations.

  3. Performance: Yarn is known for its faster and more efficient performance compared to npm and Bower. Yarn achieves this by utilizing parallel package installations, caching previously installed packages, and optimizing the dependency resolution process. Bower, being an older package manager, can be slower in terms of installation and updates due to its different architecture.

  4. Workflow integration: Yarn and npm are often preferred in JavaScript development due to their strong integration with build tools and task runners like webpack, Grunt, and Gulp. They provide extensive command-line interfaces (CLIs) and scripts that allow seamless integration into various workflows. Bower, on the other hand, is less prevalent in modern JavaScript development and may require additional configuration or manual setup to integrate with specific build tools.

  5. Registry support: npm has the largest package registry among the three package managers, offering a vast range of packages and libraries. Yarn also makes use of the npm registry and can directly install packages from it. Bower, however, has its own separate registry called the Bower registry. While it has a significant number of packages, it may not always have the same level of package availability as npm.

  6. Maturity and community support: npm is the most mature and widely adopted package manager, with a strong community and extensive documentation. It has been around for a longer time and has built a robust ecosystem around it. Yarn, although relatively newer, is backed by Facebook and has gained popularity for its performance and improved features. Bower, while still used in some projects, has seen a decline in popularity and community support over time.

In summary, Bower, Yarn, and npm differ in their approach to dependency resolution, lockfile generation, performance, workflow integration, registry support, and maturity/community support. Each package manager has its own strengths and weaknesses, and the choice of which one to use will depend on the specific requirements and preferences of the project.

Advice on Bower, npm, and Yarn
Needs advice
on
npmnpm
and
YarnYarn

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?"

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Replies (14)
Julian Sanchez
Lead Developer at Chore Champion · | 11 upvotes · 240.7K views
Recommends
on
YarnYarn
at

We use Yarn because it allows us to more simply manage our node_modules. It also simplifies commands and increases speed when installing modules. Our teams module download time was cut in half after switching from NPM to Yarn. We now require all employees to use Yarn (to prevent errors with package-lock.json and yarn.lock).

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Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm since new version is pretty fast as well (Yarn may be still faster a bit but the difference isn't huge). No need for other dependency and mainly Yarn sometimes do not work. Sometimes when I want to install project dependencies I got error using Yarn but with npm everything is installed correctly.

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Recommends
on
YarnYarn

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...

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Mark Nelissen
Recommends
on
npmnpmnpmnpm

I use npm because I also mainly use React and TypeScript. Since several typings (from DefinitelyTyped) depend on the React typings, Yarn tends to mess up which leads to duplicate libraries present (different versions of the same type definition), which hinders the Typescript compiler. Npm always resolves to a single version per transitive dependency. At least that's my experience with both.

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Recommends
on
YarnYarn

As far as I know Yarn is a super module of NPM. But it still needs npm to run.

Yarn was developed by Facebook's guys to fix some npm issues and performance.

If you use the last version of npm most of this problem does not exist anymore.

You can choose the option which makes you more confortable. I like using yarn because I'm used to it.

In the end the packages will be the same. Just try both and choose the one you feel more confortable. :)

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tataata
Frontend designer and developer · | 3 upvotes · 226.2K views
Recommends
on
YarnYarn

Yarn made it painless for the team to sync on versions of packages that we use on the project <3

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Shuuji TAKAHASHI
Recommends
on
YarnYarn

I use Yarn because it outputs nice progress messages with cute emoji and installs packages quickly if the package is cached. Also, Yarn creates yarn.lock file which makes the developer use the consistent environment.

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Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm because its the official package manager for Node. It's reliability, security and speed has increased over time so the battle is over!

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Izzur Zuhri
Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm because it has a lot of community support and the performance difference with alternative tool is not so significant for me.

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Tor Hagemann
Principal Software Engineer at Socotra · | 3 upvotes · 126.3K views
Recommends
on
npmnpmYarnYarn

You should use whichever had the best DX (developer experience) for your team. If you are doing a massive front-end project, consider yarn if not only because it makes it a snap to go from zero to ready. What some people say about npm being more stable or easier for smaller projects is highly true as well. (not to mention, you sometimes have to install yarn) But, note that official NodeJS Docker images ship with both npm and yarn. If you want to use yarn, put package-lock=false and optionally save-exact=true in your project's .npmrc file. Compare whether you prefer the ergonomics of yarn global add over npm install -g or see fewer meaningless warnings for the specific set of dependencies you leverage.

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Denys Slipetskyy
Recommends
on
YarnYarn
at

I use Yarn because it process my dependencies way faster, predictable deps resolution order, upgrade-interactive is very handy + some Yarn specific features (workspaces, Plug’n’Play alternative installation strategy) ...

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Francois Leurent
Recommends
on
npmnpm
at

We tend to stick to npm, yarn is only a fancy alternative, not 10x better. Using a self -hosted private repository (via sinopia/npm-mirror) make package locking (mostly) pointless.

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Recommends
on
YarnYarn

I am a minimalist too. I once had issues with installing Nuxt.js using NPM so I had to install Yarn but I also found that the Dev experience was much better

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Digital All
Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm because its packaged with node installation and handles npm tokens in CI/CD tools for private packages/libraries.

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Decisions about Bower, npm, and Yarn
Oleksandr Fedotov
Senior Software Engineer at joyn · | 3 upvotes · 266.6K views

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.

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Petr Bambušek
Head of Frontend at Mews · | 2 upvotes · 277.3K views
Chose
YarnYarn
over
npmnpm
at
()

This was no real choice - we switched the moment Yarn was available, and never looked back. Yarn is the only reasonable frontend package manager that's actually being developed. They even aim to heal the node_modules madness with v2! Npm is just copying its ideas on top of introducing massive bugs with every change.

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Pros of Bower
Pros of npm
Pros of Yarn
  • 483
    Package management
  • 214
    Open source
  • 142
    Simple
  • 53
    Great for for project dependencies injection
  • 27
    Web components with Meteor
  • 8
    Portable dependencies Management
  • 647
    Best package management system for javascript
  • 382
    Open-source
  • 327
    Great community
  • 148
    More packages than rubygems, pypi, or packagist
  • 112
    Nice people matter
  • 6
    As fast as yarn but really free of facebook
  • 6
    Audit feature
  • 4
    Good following
  • 1
    Super fast
  • 1
    Stability
  • 85
    Incredibly fast
  • 22
    Easy to use
  • 13
    Open Source
  • 11
    Can install any npm package
  • 8
    Works where npm fails
  • 7
    Workspaces
  • 3
    Incomplete to run tasks
  • 2
    Fast

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Cons of Bower
Cons of npm
Cons of Yarn
  • 2
    Deprecated
  • 1
    Front end only
  • 5
    Problems with lockfiles
  • 5
    Bad at package versioning and being deterministic
  • 3
    Node-gyp takes forever
  • 1
    Super slow
  • 16
    Facebook
  • 7
    Sends data to facebook
  • 4
    Should be installed separately
  • 3
    Cannot publish to registry other than npm

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What is Bower?

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.

What is 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.

What is 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.

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What are some alternatives to Bower, npm, and Yarn?
Webpack
A bundler for javascript and friends. Packs many modules into a few bundled assets. Code Splitting allows to load parts for the application on demand. Through "loaders" modules can be CommonJs, AMD, ES6 modules, CSS, Images, JSON, Coffeescript, LESS, ... and your custom stuff.
gulp
Build system automating tasks: minification and copying of all JavaScript files, static images. More capable of watching files to automatically rerun the task when a file changes.
NuGet
A free and open-source package manager designed for the Microsoft development platform. It is also distributed as a Visual Studio extension.
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.
Grunt
The less work you have to do when performing repetitive tasks like minification, compilation, unit testing, linting, etc, the easier your job becomes. After you've configured it, a task runner can do most of that mundane work for you—and your team—with basically zero effort.
See all alternatives