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Lerna vs Yarn: What are the differences?

Introduction

In the world of JavaScript development, Lerna and Yarn are two popular tools used for managing packages and dependencies. While both tools serve similar purposes, there are key differences that set them apart. In this Markdown formatted code, we will explore and compare these differences between Lerna and Yarn.

  1. Use Case: Lerna is primarily designed to optimize the workflow of managing multiple JavaScript projects within a single Git repository. It provides a set of commands to work with these projects by facilitating package publishing, versioning, and inter-project dependency management. On the other hand, Yarn focuses on improving package management on the developer's machine by providing faster and more reliable installation of dependencies.

  2. Monorepo Support: Lerna is specifically built for managing monorepos, allowing developers to keep multiple related packages in a single repository. It helps in versioning and making changes across packages easier. In contrast, Yarn can be used with both monorepos and single-package projects, providing flexibility in different project structures.

  3. Dependency Management: Lerna uses a flat dependency management approach, where dependencies are hoisted to the root of the monorepo and shared among packages. This helps reduce duplication of dependencies and saves disk space. Yarn, on the other hand, uses a nested dependency management approach, where each package manages its own dependencies. This ensures package isolation but can lead to larger disk space usage.

  4. Lockfile Handling: Lerna generates a single lockfile for the entire monorepo, ensuring consistent dependency resolution across packages. This simplifies the process of ensuring consistent dependencies across packages. On the other hand, Yarn generates separate lockfiles for each package, providing more granular control over dependencies and allowing for finer-grained updates.

  5. Community Support: Lerna has a strong focus on monorepo workflows and is widely used in the JavaScript community for managing complex project structures. It has an active community and solid documentation to support its users. Yarn, being a package manager, has a larger user base due to its ability to work with different project structures and has extensive community support and documentation.

  6. Integration with npm: Lerna integrates seamlessly with npm, as it uses the existing npm registry for package publishing and sharing. This makes it easier for developers to adopt Lerna without major disruptions to their existing workflows. Yarn, on the other hand, has its own registry, the Yarn registry, which provides additional features like faster package downloads. However, this can require additional configuration and might need adjustments for existing npm workflows.

In Summary, Lerna is specifically designed for optimal management of monorepos, while Yarn focuses on improving package management on the developer's machine with flexible support for different project structures.

Advice on Lerna and Yarn
Needs advice
on
npmnpm
and
YarnYarn

From a StackShare Community member: “I’m a freelance web developer (I mostly use Node.js) and for future projects I’m debating between npm or Yarn as my default package manager. I’m a minimalist so I hate installing software if I don’t need to- in this case that would be Yarn. For those who made the switch from npm to Yarn, what benefits have you noticed? For those who stuck with npm, are you happy you with it?"

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Replies (14)
Julian Sanchez
Lead Developer at Chore Champion · | 11 upvotes · 252.5K views
Recommends
on
YarnYarn
at

We use Yarn because it allows us to more simply manage our node_modules. It also simplifies commands and increases speed when installing modules. Our teams module download time was cut in half after switching from NPM to Yarn. We now require all employees to use Yarn (to prevent errors with package-lock.json and yarn.lock).

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Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm since new version is pretty fast as well (Yarn may be still faster a bit but the difference isn't huge). No need for other dependency and mainly Yarn sometimes do not work. Sometimes when I want to install project dependencies I got error using Yarn but with npm everything is installed correctly.

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Recommends
on
YarnYarn

p.s.

I am not sure about the performance of the latest version of npm, whether it is different from my understanding of it below. Because I use npm very rarely when I had the following knowledge.

------⏬

I use Yarn because, first, yarn is the first tool to lock the version. Second, although npm also supports the lock version, when you use npm to lock the version, and then use package-lock.json on other systems, package-lock.json Will be modified. You understand what I mean, when you deploy projects based on Git...

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Mark Nelissen
Recommends
on
npmnpmnpmnpm

I use npm because I also mainly use React and TypeScript. Since several typings (from DefinitelyTyped) depend on the React typings, Yarn tends to mess up which leads to duplicate libraries present (different versions of the same type definition), which hinders the Typescript compiler. Npm always resolves to a single version per transitive dependency. At least that's my experience with both.

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Recommends
on
YarnYarn

As far as I know Yarn is a super module of NPM. But it still needs npm to run.

Yarn was developed by Facebook's guys to fix some npm issues and performance.

If you use the last version of npm most of this problem does not exist anymore.

You can choose the option which makes you more confortable. I like using yarn because I'm used to it.

In the end the packages will be the same. Just try both and choose the one you feel more confortable. :)

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Recommends
on
YarnYarn

I am a minimalist too. I once had issues with installing Nuxt.js using NPM so I had to install Yarn but I also found that the Dev experience was much better

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Digital All
Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm because its packaged with node installation and handles npm tokens in CI/CD tools for private packages/libraries.

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Izzur Zuhri
Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm because it has a lot of community support and the performance difference with alternative tool is not so significant for me.

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tataata
Frontend designer and developer · | 3 upvotes · 237.7K views
Recommends
on
YarnYarn

Yarn made it painless for the team to sync on versions of packages that we use on the project <3

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Shuuji TAKAHASHI
Recommends
on
YarnYarn

I use Yarn because it outputs nice progress messages with cute emoji and installs packages quickly if the package is cached. Also, Yarn creates yarn.lock file which makes the developer use the consistent environment.

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Tor Hagemann
Principal Software Engineer at Socotra · | 3 upvotes · 137.9K views
Recommends
on
npmnpmYarnYarn

You should use whichever had the best DX (developer experience) for your team. If you are doing a massive front-end project, consider yarn if not only because it makes it a snap to go from zero to ready. What some people say about npm being more stable or easier for smaller projects is highly true as well. (not to mention, you sometimes have to install yarn) But, note that official NodeJS Docker images ship with both npm and yarn. If you want to use yarn, put package-lock=false and optionally save-exact=true in your project's .npmrc file. Compare whether you prefer the ergonomics of yarn global add over npm install -g or see fewer meaningless warnings for the specific set of dependencies you leverage.

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Recommends
on
npmnpm

I use npm because its the official package manager for Node. It's reliability, security and speed has increased over time so the battle is over!

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Francois Leurent
Recommends
on
npmnpm
at

We tend to stick to npm, yarn is only a fancy alternative, not 10x better. Using a self -hosted private repository (via sinopia/npm-mirror) make package locking (mostly) pointless.

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Denys Slipetskyy
Recommends
on
YarnYarn
at

I use Yarn because it process my dependencies way faster, predictable deps resolution order, upgrade-interactive is very handy + some Yarn specific features (workspaces, Plug’n’Play alternative installation strategy) ...

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Decisions about Lerna and Yarn
Oleksandr Fedotov
Senior Software Engineer at joyn · | 3 upvotes · 279.5K views

As we have to build the application for many different TV platforms we want to split the application logic from the device/platform specific code. Previously we had different repositories and it was very hard to keep the development process when changes were done in multiple repositories, as we had to synchronize code reviews as well as merging and then updating the dependencies of projects. This issues would be even more critical when building the project from scratch what we did at Joyn. Therefor to keep all code in one place, at the same time keeping in separated in different modules we decided to give a try to monorepo. First we tried out lerna which was fine at the beginning, but later along the way we had issues with adding new dependencies which came out of the blue and were not easy to fix. Next round of evolution was yarn workspaces, we are still using it and are pretty happy with dev experience it provides. And one more advantage we got when switched to yarn workspaces that we also switched from npm to yarn what improved the state of the lock file a lot, because with npm package-lock file was updated every time you run npm install, frequent updates of package-lock file were causing very often merge conflicts. So right now we not just having faster dependencies installation time but also no conflicts coming from lock file.

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Petr Bambušek
Head of Frontend at Mews · | 2 upvotes · 293.4K views
Chose
YarnYarn
over
npmnpm
at
()

This was no real choice - we switched the moment Yarn was available, and never looked back. Yarn is the only reasonable frontend package manager that's actually being developed. They even aim to heal the node_modules madness with v2! Npm is just copying its ideas on top of introducing massive bugs with every change.

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Pros of Lerna
Pros of Yarn
    Be the first to leave a pro
    • 85
      Incredibly fast
    • 22
      Easy to use
    • 13
      Open Source
    • 11
      Can install any npm package
    • 8
      Works where npm fails
    • 7
      Workspaces
    • 3
      Incomplete to run tasks
    • 2
      Fast

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    Cons of Lerna
    Cons of Yarn
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      • 16
        Facebook
      • 7
        Sends data to facebook
      • 4
        Should be installed separately
      • 3
        Cannot publish to registry other than npm

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