Migrating to PNPM

Advantages (as I see them).

• It stores node_modules in a single place and references them, rather than having multiple copies of the same dependency across different files - this makes pnpm install and a lot quicker and reduces disk space.
• You can prune dev dependencies ahead of deployment in CI, meaning you can run the test with your dev dependencies and then strip them out in one command before deploying.
• Workspaces allow you to install/update etc all dependencies from a top level.

Quick start

• rm -rf node_modules
• pnpm import - generates a pnpm-lock.yaml from another package manager’s lockfile.
• rm package-lock.json
• pnpm install
• Update any yarn or npm commands in the package.json scripts and documentation.

These are handy things…

• pnpm update - updates all deps within their specified range (eg won’t do major version bumps)
  • Key difference from yarn is that this also updates the package.json file to give clarity on which version you’re running.
  • pnpm update "@11ty/*" - update specific packages that match @11ty/*
  • pnpm update --latest --interactive - pick and choose which packages to bump to their latest (beyond specified range).
• pnpm prune --prod - rips out all dev dependencies

Gotchas

Dependencies are (correctly) explicit

• If you’ve used a dependency from another dep in your code it will error
• You’ll need to pnpm add xxx for it to work

Using PNPM to manage Node versions

Note: PNPM does not allow different Node.js versions per project - it’s global only, so only handy if you’re consistent with your node version across all things. For the moment, sticking with nvm is probably preferred.

If you want to manage Node.js with PNPM, you need to remove any Node.js installed by other tools, then install PNPM using one of the standalone scripts that are provided on the installation page: https://pnpm.io/installation