pnpm: The Faster, Disk-Efficient Package Manager

Summary: Why You Should Use pnpm

Reflecting on 6 months of pnpm usage:

Clear Advantages

1. Disk space savings: Even working on 10 projects, each library is stored only once
2. Installation speed: Average 3x faster than npm
3. Strict dependency management: Phantom dependency issues eliminated at the source
4. Monorepo support: Workspace features perfectly compatible with Lerna/Turborepo
5. Compatibility: Can migrate npm/yarn projects directly

Still Inconvenient Aspects

1. Ecosystem: Some older packages don't play well with pnpm
2. Learning curve: Need to understand hard link/symlink concepts for troubleshooting
3. Documentation: Less Korean-language resources compared to npm

Conclusion

For new projects, I unconditionally recommend pnpm. For existing projects, if migration costs aren't too high, it's well worth switching.

Especially try it immediately if:

• Dependency installation takes too long in CI/CD
• Running low on disk space
• Running a monorepo
• Have suffered from phantom dependency issues

The time I spent drinking coffee waiting for npm install to finish can now be spent on actual development. That alone makes it worthwhile.