Overview

npm

Stacks126.4K

Followers82.2K

Votes1.6K

GitHub Stars17.6K

Forks3.0K

pnpm

Stacks314

Followers100

Votes11

GitHub Stars33.1K

Forks1.2K

npm vs pnpm: What are the differences?

Npm vs Pnpm: Key Differences

Introduction: Both npm (Node Package Manager) and pnpm (Permissive Node Package Manager) are popular tools used in the JavaScript ecosystem for managing packages and dependencies. Although they serve the same purpose, there are several key differences between them. This article will highlight the main differences between npm and pnpm.

1. Package installation approach: One of the major differences between npm and pnpm is their package installation approach. Npm installs each package in a separate directory, which results in duplicate packages being stored in multiple places. On the other hand, pnpm uses a single global store for packages, allowing for deduplication of packages and saving disk space.

2. Disk space usage: Due to its approach of storing packages in a single global store, pnpm is more efficient in terms of disk space usage compared to npm. Because npm creates separate copies of packages for each project, it can consume a significant amount of disk space, especially when multiple projects have the same dependencies.

3. Network bandwidth usage: Another advantage of pnpm over npm is its efficient usage of network bandwidth. When multiple projects use the same packages and dependencies, pnpm can serve them from its global store, reducing the need to download duplicate packages over the network. This can result in significant savings in terms of bandwidth consumption.

4. Parallel package installation: Pnpm also has the capability to install packages in parallel, allowing for faster installation times. It achieves this by leveraging its ability to share packages across projects from the global store. On the other hand, npm installs packages sequentially, which can be time-consuming, especially for projects with numerous dependencies.

5. Version control integration: Pnpm provides better integration with version control systems like Git. It achieves this by leveraging a package-lock.yaml file, which makes it easier to track and manage changes to packages and dependencies over time. Npm, on the other hand, uses package-lock.json, which can create conflicts and difficulties in managing version control.

6. Compatibility and ecosystem support: Npm has been the standard package manager in the JavaScript ecosystem for a long time, and it has extensive community support and a vast selection of packages available. In contrast, pnpm, as a relatively newer tool, may have some compatibility issues with certain packages or modules due to differences in the way it handles dependencies. Although pnpm strives to be compatible with npm, some edge cases may require additional effort to resolve.

In summary, pnpm offers advantages such as efficient disk space and network bandwidth usage, parallel package installation, better version control integration, while npm enjoys broader compatibility with the existing JavaScript ecosystem and community support. The choice between npm and pnpm depends on the specific requirements and priorities of the project.

Advice on npm, pnpm

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

Mark

CTO at Gemsotec bvba

Apr 25, 2019

Reviewon

React

TypeScript

Yarn

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.

251k views251k

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

npm	pnpm
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.	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.
-	Fast. As fast as npm and Yarn; Efficient. One version of a package is saved only ever once on a disk; Great for multi-package repositories (a.k.a. monorepos); See the recursive commands; Strict. A package can access only dependencies that are specified in its package.json; Deterministic. Has a lockfile called pnpm-lock.yaml; Works everywhere. Works on Windows, Linux and OS X; Aliases. Install different versions of the same package or import it using a different name.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 17.6K	GitHub Stars 33.1K
GitHub Forks 3.0K	GitHub Forks 1.2K
Stacks 126.4K	Stacks 314
Followers 82.2K	Followers 100
Votes 1.6K	Votes 11
Pros & Cons
Pros 648 Best package management system for javascript 382 Open-source 327 Great community 148 More packages than rubygems, pypi, or packagist 112 Nice people matter Cons 5 Problems with lockfiles 5 Bad at package versioning and being deterministic 3 Node-gyp takes forever 1 Super slow	Pros 4 Fast 3 Uses less disk space 2 Works as a Node.js package manager 1 Has a nice UI 1 Has CLI auto-completion
Integrations
No integrations available	Linux macOS Windows

What are some alternatives to npm, pnpm?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.