pnpm

Performant npm installations

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

Read our contributing guide if you're looking to contribute.

Follow the pnpm Twitter account for updates.

Table of Contents

• Background
• Install
• Usage
• Custom registries
• Preview release
• Benchmark
• Prior art
• License

Background

pnpm maintains a flat storage of all your dependencies in node_modules/.store. They are then symlinked wherever they're needed. This nets you the benefits of less disk space usage, while keeping your node_modules clean. See store layout for an explanation.

.
└─ node_modules/
   ├─ .store/
   │  ├─ chalk@1.1.1/_/
   │  │  └─ node_modules/
   │  │     ├─ ansi-styles      -> ../../../ansi-styles@2.1.0/_
   │  │     └─ has-ansi         -> ../../../has-ansi@2.0.0/_
   │  ├─ ansi-styles@2.1.0/_/
   │  └─ has-ansi@2.0.0/_/
   └─ chalk                     -> .store/chalk@1.1.1/_

Install

Install it via npm.

npm install -g pnpm

Usage

Use pnpm in place of npm. It overrides pnpm i, pnpm install and some other command, the rest 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

Prior art

• Compared to ied
• Compared to npm

License

MIT © Rico Sta. Cruz and contributors