If you’re working in a monorepo and need one project to reference another project, pnpm is generally the better choice than npm for several reasons:
1. Efficient Local Linking
- pnpm provides a more efficient and robust way of handling dependencies within a monorepo. When one project in your monorepo needs to reference another project, pnpm uses symbolic links to ensure that changes to the referenced project are reflected immediately.
- This means that if you make a change to a shared library or package within the monorepo, those changes will be instantly available to other projects that reference it. You don’t have to re-install or re-link the packages manually.
2. Automatic Version Management
- pnpm can handle local packages seamlessly using its workspaces feature. If you set up your projects as part of a
pnpm-workspace.yamlfile, pnpm will automatically link the projects for you, making it easy to share code and dependencies. - Additionally, pnpm’s linking system is designed to minimize issues with dependency resolution, which can be a challenge in monorepo setups.
3. Better Monorepo Support
- pnpm was designed with monorepos in mind and provides features that make it easier to manage dependencies between projects. For example:
- You can run scripts across all projects in your monorepo or target specific projects using filters.
- The single
node_modulesfolder and content-addressable storage system make dependency management more efficient and reduce duplication. - Strict dependency resolution helps prevent unexpected issues when referencing other projects.