Speeding up npm in virtual environments

We faced a significant issue with npm install speed in our virtual environment, specifically when using VirtualBox. Our initial investigation revealed some quick wins to improve performance, but installing packages still took a long time. We explored alternative package managers like ied and freight, but ultimately built our own solution called npmserve, which offloads installs to a remote server, significantly improving build times by leveraging caching and reducing the load on the development environment.