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Why does my node_modules
folder use disk space if packages are stored in a global store?
pnpm creates hard links from the global store to the project's node_modules
folders. Hard links point to the same place on the disk where the original files are. So, for example, if you have foo
in your project as a dependency and it occupies 1MB of space, then it will look like it occupies 1MB of space in the project's node_modules
folder and the same amount of space in the global store. However, that 1MB is the same space on the disk addressed from two different locations. So in total foo
occupies 1MB, not 2MB.
For more on this subject:
- Why do hard links seem to take the same space as the originals?
- A thread from the pnpm chat room
- An issue in the pnpm repo
Does it work on Windows?
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Using symbolic linking on Windows is problematic to say the least, however, pnpm has a workaround. For Windows, we use junctions instead.
But the nested node_modules
approach is incompatible with Windows?
Early versions of npm had issues because of nesting all node_modules
(see this issue). However, pnpm does not create deep folders, it stores all packages flatly and uses symbolic links to create the dependency tree structure.
What about circular symlinks?
Although pnpm uses linking to put dependencies into node_modules
folders, circular symlinks are avoided because parent packages are placed into the same node_modules
folder in which their dependencies are. So foo
's dependencies are not in foo/node_modules
, but foo
is in node_modules
together with its own dependencies.
Why have hard links at all? Why not symlink directly to the global store?
One package can have different sets of dependencies on one machine.
In project A foo@1.0.0
can have a dependency resolved to bar@1.0.0
, but in project B the same dependency of foo
might resolve to bar@1.1.0
; so, pnpm hard links foo@1.0.0
to every project where it is used, in order to create different sets of dependencies for it.
Direct symlinking to the global store would work with Node's --preserve-symlinks
flag, however, that approach comes with a plethora of its own issues, so we decided to stick with hard links. For more details about why this decision was made, see this issue.
Does pnpm work across multiple drives or filesystems?
The package store should be on the same drive and filesystem as installations, otherwise packages will be copied, not linked. This is due to a limitation in how hard linking works, in that a file on one filesystem cannot address a location in another. See Issue #712 for more details.
pnpm functions differently in the 2 cases below:
Store path is specified
If the store path is specified via the store config, then copying occurs between the store and any projects that are on a different disk.
If you run pnpm install
on disk A
, then the pnpm store must be on disk A
. If the pnpm store is located on disk B
, then all required packages will be directly copied to the project location instead of being linked. This severely inhibits the storage and performance benefits of pnpm.
Store path is NOT specified
If the store path is not set, then multiple stores are created (one per drive or filesystem).
If installation is run on disk A
, the store will be created on A
.pnpm-store
under the filesystem root. If later the installation is run on disk B
, an independent store will be created on B
at .pnpm-store
. The projects would still maintain the benefits of pnpm, but each drive may have redundant packages.
What does pnpm
stand for?
pnpm
stands for performant npm
. @rstacruz came up with the name.
pnpm
does not work with <YOUR-PROJECT-HERE>?
In most cases it means that one of the dependencies require packages not declared in package.json
. It is a common mistake caused by flat node_modules
. If this happens, this is an error in the dependency and the dependency should be fixed. That might take time though, so pnpm supports workarounds to make the buggy packages work.
Solution 1
In case there are issues, you can use the node-linker=hoisted
setting. This creates a flat node_modules
structure similar to the one created by npm
.
Solution 2
In the following example, a dependency does not have the iterall
module in its own list of deps.
The easiest solution to resolve missing dependencies of the buggy packages is to add iterall
as a dependency to our project's package.json
.
You can do so, by installing it via pnpm add iterall
, and will be automatically added to your project's package.json
.
"dependencies": {
...
"iterall": "^1.2.2",
...
}
Solution 3
One of the solutions is to use hooks for adding the missing dependencies to the package's package.json
.
An example was Webpack Dashboard which wasn't working with pnpm
. It has since been resolved such that it works with pnpm
now.
It used to throw an error:
Error: Cannot find module 'babel-traverse'
at /node_modules/inspectpack@2.2.3/node_modules/inspectpack/lib/actions/parse
The problem was that babel-traverse
was used in inspectpack
which was used by webpack-dashboard
, but babel-traverse
wasn't specified in inspectpack
's package.json
. It still worked with npm
and yarn
because they create flat node_modules
.
The solution was to create a .pnpmfile.cjs
with the following contents:
module.exports = {
hooks: {
readPackage: (pkg) => {
if (pkg.name === "inspectpack") {
pkg.dependencies['babel-traverse'] = '^6.26.0';
}
return pkg;
}
}
};
After creating a .pnpmfile.cjs
, delete pnpm-lock.yaml
only - there is no need to delete node_modules
, as pnpm hooks only affect module resolution. Then, rebuild the dependencies & it should be working.