JavaScript package managers compared: npm, Yarn, or pnpm?

The landscape of JavaScript package managers has evolved significantly since npm's inception in 2010, with npm, Yarn, and pnpm emerging as the three major players today. Despite having achieved feature parity, these package managers still differ in aspects such as dependency resolution, disk-space efficiency, and installation workflows. Yarn, initially developed by Facebook to address npm's limitations, introduced innovations like parallelized operations and native monorepo support. Its successor, Yarn Berry, further revolutionized package management with its Plug’n’Play (PnP) mode, eliminating the traditional node_modules approach. pnpm, launched in 2017, offers a distinct content-addressable storage strategy to optimize dependency storage and performance. Each package manager provides unique security features, such as checksums and restricted binary execution, to enhance project integrity. The choice between these tools often depends on non-functional requirements, project needs, and workflow compatibility, with adoption varying across popular open-source projects.