I work in a team of about 20 other developers. All of our projects utilize npm packages and currently all of our developers are running npm to manage those packages. I'm very curious about Yarn and have it currently installed on my machine. However I'm nervous to actually use it to install packages in case it screws up a project for other developers.
My question is can one developer utilize Yarn on a project while other devs are using npm in the same repo? From what I've read, Yarn uses the same package.json file to get its dependencies. We ignore the node_modules in our repo, however we use npm shrinkwrap to lock dependencies. I know Yarn has a Yarn.lock file and that is where my concern lies. Has anyone attempted to run Yarn independently from their team and what issues have you run into?
Yarn doesn't read npm-shrinkwrap.json. It generates its own yarn.lock. While only you use yarn, the project in your environment might have dependencies version different then that your teammates have. However it's safe to try yarn in your own environment since it doesn't overwrite shrinkwrap file and won't impact other developers.
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I am now in charge of an app whose dependencies were installed using yarn. I am more familiar with NPM. Is switching over as easy as deleting the yarn.lock file and installing NPM to the project? The app hasn't been updated in a year or two so I'm trying to update everything.
Or maybe a better question is, can I install both NPM and yarn globally but pick and choose which one I use for what app? Will it cause issues if they are both installed globally on machine?
Thanks in advance
You can definitely have Yarn and NPM installed on the same machine without issue. NPM generally comes packaged with Node, so most people using Yarn will also have NPM installed, wether they use it or not.
In terms of switching a project from Yarn to NPM, it's a pretty straightforward process, like you described: remove yarn.lock and remove the existing node_modules directory just to avoid any issues.
The subtle issue here is that the yarn.lock will be the current source of truth for exactly which versions of each dependency (and sub-dependencies) is installed. So by removing the yarn.lock your package.json will now become the (incomplete) source of truth which will likely result in some dependencies being upgraded when you perform your first npm install -- then your package-lock.json will become the new strict source of truth.
Given you're planning on updating everything anyway, then this likely isn't going to be an issue, but it's worth keeping in mind as you're likely to see some minor dependency changes.
The npm-shrinkwrap ensures that installed packages also have the same version of dependencies that was used at the moment of publishing to the registry (These versions are stated in the npm-shrinkwrap which is then used on installation).
I am currently using yarn (and lerna for publishing) and working on a monorepo project with workspaces. Now I would like to have each package in the monorepo have same guarantees provided by npm-shrinkwrap.
One shortcoming of the npm-shrinkwrap is that it does not support workspaces. Hence I cannot use npm-shrinkwrap since it is only created at the root and does not influence how individual packages in the monorepo get installed.
Since I am using yarn, I was wondering if there is an alternative to npm-shrinkwrap in yarn?
Or maybe a better question is, using yarn/lerna, how do I lock version dependencies for publication, such that when my packages in the mono-repo are downloaded, they are downloaded with the exact versions of dependencies (and transitive dependencies) that was specified at the point of publication?
I found the following in the yarn docs (classic yarn 1.x)
If you are using an npm-shrinkwrap.json file right now, be aware that you may end up with a different set of dependencies. Yarn does not support npm shrinkwrap files as they don’t have enough information in them to power Yarn’s more deterministic algorithm. If you are using a shrinkwrap file it may be easier to convert everyone working on the project to use Yarn at the same time. Simply remove your existing npm-shrinkwrap.json file and check in the newly created yarn.lock file.
From here:
https://classic.yarnpkg.com/en/docs/migrating-from-npm
I have been using NPM exclusively for my projects and was assigned another project that requires using Yarn. I need to have support for both and will frequently switch back and forth on projects.
Are there any known issues with installing yarn globally and still using NPM on other projects?
super awesome, there are no such conflicts using yarn and npm together.
because yarn and npm both have different installation directories.
for global packages, you can use both, but don't forget to stick to one. we use yarn for our production.
for non-global packages, it is beneficial to stick to what the project author uses.
it becomes difficult sometimes if you have yarn.lock and package.lock file together, because there is a risk of being out of sync. for example, someone updated one package using yarn, someone will not get that changes who use npm and so on.
Yarn and npm are interchangeable. As long as you use the same one each time, there is no difference between them. They have different install directories, which is why they can't be used together. Yarn will install a package, npm can't find it. npm will install a package, yarn can't find it.
it is a more beneficial and good habit to use one package for each project to make sure that all packages are installed correctly, Having half your packages installed with yarn will stop npm start from working; having half your packages installed with npm will stop yarn start from working.
also always use the same one for global too, it does not matter what you use yarn or npm. it does not matter to your global install.
I recently started using pnpm as a package manager to for my node modules. This download allows for just one version of a package to be saved only once on a disk. This saves my hard drive space by only downloading the packages that the aforementioned download doesn't already have in a global scope. I was wondering if there are any other viable options that would assist in not having to run 'npm install' for every new project. Thanks in advance.
There is a new beta command in pnpm that allows doing installation in many projects at the same time. It is called pnpm recursive install.
Run pnpm help recursive to see the docs. As of pnpm#1.25, it prints:
pnpm recursive [concurrency] install
Experimental! Concurrently runs installation in all subdirectories with a package.json (excluding node_modules).
Options: same as for pnpm install
pnpm recursive [concurrency] update
Experimental! Concurrently runs update in all subdirectories with a package.json (excluding node_modules).
Options: same as for pnpm update
As far as I know, pnpm is currently the only Node.js package manager that has this feature.
Alternatively, you can use some monorepo-managing tool like lerna. It will run the package manager in each project for you. It will be a lot slower than pnpm recursive though.
You can try Yarn by Facebook: https://yarnpkg.com/en/
From their website:
Yarn caches every package it downloads so it never needs to download it again. It also parallelizes operations to maximize resource utilization so install times are faster than ever.
However, you still have to run yarn install for each package. I don't think it's ever really ideal to "share" packages between different installs. What if you had to make a one-off change to a package file? That would then affect all your pojects.
What exactly are you trying to avoid/do with your package manager? Yarn is incredibly easy to use and builds out all dependency relations based upon the package.json.
Everytime you make a new project npm install has to be run as it builds the node-modules that will be used for the node_modules. Whether you use Yarn, or pnpm, you still will have to do the equivalent of yarn add, etc.
For managing many dependencies, yarn is really nice because you can yarn add [insert package here] and yarn start.
I'm quite new to ReactNative so sorry if it's obvious, but..
Each RN project init-ed via CLI has a large number of node modules stored in project_root/node_modules. Not that I would mind, but if you have several projects it seems redundant and takes up time/space to move it to the source versioning system.
Wouldn't it be possible to retrieve all these same modules from the general node_modules on the machine instead ?
You never want to store dependencies nested in node_modules in your source control... it defeats the whole purpose of versioning and dependencies in general. Your package.json file will specify the versions so when you run npm install it knows exactly which dependencies to grab.
As an alternative, Yarn is an up and rising package client that Facebook developed that does a much better job of caching your packages locally so that way if multiple projects reuse the same depencencies, it will still satisfy the need to keep them in node_modules but doesn't need to perform http requests for each one.
Yarn doesn't replace NPM as a package registry, just a better client to download, maintain, and cache those packages.
Yarn also adds a yarn.lock file (similar to Ruby's Gemfile.lock) that allows you to lock in the specific versions used in your app, regardles of the package.json. This file can be stored in version control, which is probably what you were wanting to achieve by saving the node_modules in version control.
Some good reads...
Yarn vs NPM
Scotch.io Yarn Tutorial
Why I'm working on Yarn (Yehuda Katz)
I would echo Brad's answer: Don't put node_modules in version control. npm install will install the correct versions from the package.json. Just put package.json in version control, not node_modules.
However, if you still want to save disk space, you can install some of your dependencies in a general node_modules folder by using the link option:
npm config set link true -g
You can read more about link here: https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/config#link.
Note that you must not include node_modules in your version control when using this option since npm will put symlinks to the globally installed packages in node_modules. The global install location varies from machine to machine, so if node_modules is in version control, it may link to non-existent locations.