Pnpm
Pnpm is a fast, disk space-efficient package manager for JavaScript and Node.js that uses a content-addressable storage system to store all packages in a single location on disk, linking them as needed. It creates a non-flat node_modules structure by using symlinks, which reduces duplication and improves installation speed compared to traditional package managers like npm or Yarn. Pnpm is designed to be a drop-in replacement for npm, supporting the same package.json format and commands while offering better performance and stricter dependency management.
Developers should use Pnpm when working on JavaScript or Node.js projects, especially in large-scale applications or monorepos, to significantly reduce disk space usage and speed up installation times by avoiding duplicate package downloads. It is particularly valuable in CI/CD pipelines and development environments where multiple projects share dependencies, as its efficient storage model minimizes network bandwidth and storage costs. Pnpm also enforces stricter dependency resolution, helping prevent issues like phantom dependencies and ensuring more reproducible builds.