Yarn and pnpm

Tagged in:
• Hugo
• cli

Yarn and pnpm are package managers similar to npm but can be much faster for some things. There are several versions of Yarn, the main ones being 1, 2 or 3.

This method uses corepack which is part of Node.js and has been described as a package manager for package managers.

To install first open a terminal and, if in Windows, run

Then simply type

1corepack enable

and hit enter.

Updating

Check for Yarn and pnpm versions:

1yarn -v
2pnpm -v

For Yarn for me it was 1.22. To update to the latest stable version for all your projects go to the root of your projects folder and type:

1yarn set version stable

All the subfolders will now use the latest version. At the time of writing that updated me to v 3.1.1.

However outside of your projects folder the yarn version will still be 1.22. Yarn makes the change by adding a .yarn folder containing a releases folder with that latest version: yarn-3.1.1.1.cjs. This is about 2MB in size.

You can now install with Yarn instead of NPM in any sub directory. However deciding whether to use Yarn or pnpm or npm may depend on which packages you want to install.

pnpm

pnpm is also enabled when using corepack enable.

This is unlikely to be the latest version so to upgrade use the following, replacing the version number with the latest version number, for pnpm

1corepack prepare pnpm@7.9.4 --activate

pnpm’s main advantage is that it saves disk space by not duplicating dependencies when different projects use the same ones. This can be a be a huge advantage for anyone using the same package in multiple projects.

pnpm install with corepack

Note that not all commands are the same for pnpm. For instance:

Also note that pnpx is deprecated and there is now pnmp exec, pnpm run, pnpm start and pnpm dix to use instead.

Use pnpm --help to find out more.

Yarn with Hugo

Hugo pipes will only work with node_modules so either use ’npm’ or use the enable the node-modules plugin in that case.

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