How to decrease deployment time by 44% with pnpm
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Serhii Shramko /
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Introduction
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I found article from Vercel about Projects using pnpm can now be deployed with zero configuration and I wanted to try it.
Why Migrate to pnpm?
Before diving into the migration process, itβs important to understand why pnpm is beneficial:
- Speed π: pnpm installs dependencies faster than npm by using a unique package linking mechanism.
- Disk Space π: It saves disk space by using a global store and hard links.
- Consistency π‘: pnpm ensures that dependencies are installed in a way that is more consistent with the version
specified in your
package.json
.
Installation of pnpm
First, you need to install pnpm globally. You can do this by running:
brew install pnpm
Migration Steps
1. Clean the Project
Remove the node_modules
directory and the package-lock.json
file. This step is crucial to ensure that there are no
leftover artifacts from npm that might interfere with pnpm.
rm -rf node_modules package-lock.json
2. Initialize pnpm
Run the following command to initialize pnpm in your project directory:
pnpm install
This command will create a pnpm-lock.yaml
file and install all the dependencies listed in your package.json
.
3. Verify Dependency Installation
Check that all dependencies have been installed correctly by running:
pnpm list
This command lists all the installed dependencies and their versions. Make sure that there are no missing or outdated packages.
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Updating Scripts
1. Update npm Scripts
In your package.json
, update any npm scripts to use pnpm where necessary. For example, if you have a script for
installing dependencies, change it from:
"scripts": {
"install": "npm install"
}
to:
"scripts": {
"install": "pnpm install"
}
2. Update CI/CD Pipelines
If your project uses CI/CD pipelines, ensure that the build scripts and installation commands are updated to use pnpm. For example, in a GitHub Actions with pnpm workflow, you might update the step as follows:
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- uses: pnpm/action-setup@v4
with:
version: 9
- uses: actions/setup-node@v4
with:
node-version: ${{ matrix.node-version }}
cache: 'pnpm'
- name: Install
run: pnpm i
- name: Run Tests // All your CI commands
run: pnpm run test
Handling Issues and Troubleshooting
During the migration, you might encounter some issues.
Error: Unable to locate executable file: pnpm. Please verify either the file path exists or the file can be found within a directory specified by the PATH environment variable. Also check the file mode to verify the file is executable.
I stuck with this error when I tried to run the pnpm
command in GitHub Actions.
The solution was to use the pnpm/action-setup@v4
before actions/setup-node@v4
.
So simply just copy the above code and paste it in your .yml
file.
Conclusion
This migration helped me to reduce the time of deployment by 44% and the size of node_modules
by 5%.
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