When it comes to Node Package Managers, you will certainly cross paths with both NPM and Yarn. If you’re a newer developer, you may not fully understand the differences between the two. Let’s take a dive into these package managers for Node.js and touch on why to use them.
NPM
NPM, or Node Package Manager, is the most fundamental package manager for Node.js. NPM is installed along with Node.js and consists of two things - First, it acts as an online repository for publishing open source Node.js projects. Second, it functions within the command line to interact with the project repository, helping to manage the project’s dependencies and package installation. In short, NPM is intended to manage the project dependencies defined within the package.json file, enabling packages to be installed with a single terminal command.
Yarn
Yarn is a newer package manager. The primary motivations for migrating to Yarn are its offline download feature and speed. Though sometimes a condemned practice, packages installed using Yarn are installed to the user disk. This way, when offline, Yarn retains the ability to install packages. Alternatively, because NPM requires the internet to install packages, it won’t clutter the local disk with packages that may only be used once. While both NPM and Yarn download packages from the NPM repository, Yarn caches all installed packages and installs them simultaneously, making it faster than NPM.
When to Migrate
Overall, using Yarn is very similar to using NPM. The added features and speed may certainly be advantageous, however there are two important asides to note. If you’ve already initiated a project utilizing NPM, transferring said project over to Yarn may create issues with installing native modules. Additionally, Yarn is not compatible with Node.js 5 or older. Outside of these conditions, migrating to Yarn should be considered if frequent offline use or an abundance of project dependencies are a factor.
Conclusion
While the use of both NPM and Yarn are quite similar and relatively interchangeable, Yarn does provide certain benefits in the way of added features and installation speed. On the other hand, NPM is straightforward and battle-tested. In the end, both package managers are highly popular, stable tools for managing Node.js packages.
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