pnpm's Introduction

pnpm

Performant npm installations

pnpm is a fast implementation of npm install. It is loosely based off ied.

⚠️ Name change

The npm package was changed from pnpm.js (0.15 and below) to pnpm. The old package will no longer be updated. For old users, uninstall the old version and install the new one:
npm uninstall -g pnpm.js
npm install -g pnpm

Install

Install it via npm.

npm install -g pnpm

Use pnpm in place of npm. It overrides pnpm i and pnpm install—all other commands will passthru to npm.

pnpm install lodash

Custom registries

pnpm uses whatever npm's configured to use as its registry. See: custom registries.

Preview release

pnpm will stay in <1.0.0 until it's achieved feature parity with npm install. See roadmap for details.

Benchmark

time npm i babel-preset-es2015 browserify chalk debug minimist mkdirp
    66.15 real        15.60 user         3.54 sys

time pnpm i babel-preset-es2015 browserify chalk debug minimist mkdirp
    11.04 real         6.85 user         2.85 sys

Design

pnpm maintains a flat storage of all your dependencies in node_modules/.store. They are then symlinked wherever they're needed. See store layout for an explanation.

.
└─ node_modules/
   ├─ .store/
   │  ├─ [email protected]/_/
   │  │  └─ node_modules/
   │  │     ├─ ansi-styles      -> ../../../[email protected]/_
   │  │     └─ has-ansi         -> ../../../[email protected]/_
   │  ├─ [email protected]/_/
   │  └─ [email protected]/_/
   └─ chalk                     -> .store/[email protected]/_