pnpm
maintains a flat storage of all your dependencies in node_modules/.store
. They are then symlinked whereever they're needed.
This is like npm@2
's recursive module handling (without the disk space bloat), and like npm@3
s flat dependency tree (except with each module being predictably atomic).
To illustrate, an installation of chalk@1.1.1 may look like this:
.
└─ node_modules/
├─ .store/
│ ├─ chalk@1.1.1/_/
│ │ └─ node_modules/
│ │ ├─ ansi-styles -> ../../../ansi-styles@2.1.0/_
│ │ ├─ has-ansi -> ../../../has-ansi@2.0.0/_
│ │ └─ supports-color -> ../../../supports-color@2.0.0/_
│ ├─ ansi-styles@2.1.0/_/
│ ├─ has-ansi@2.0.0/_/
│ └─ supports-color@2.0.0/_/
└─ chalk -> .store/chalk@1.1.1/_
The intermediate _
directories are needed to hide node_modules
from npm utilities like npm ls
, npm prune
, npm shrinkwrap
and so on. The name _
is chosen because it helps make stack traces readable.
Symlinks to deep dependencies are stored in node_modules/.store/node_modules
, in addition to the diagram above. It looks something like this:
.
└─ node_modules/
├─ .store/
│ ├─ chalk@1.1.1/_/
│ ├─ ansi-styles@2.1.0/_/
│ ├─ has-ansi@2.0.0/_/
│ └─ node_modules/
│ └─ ansi-styles -> ../ansi-styles@2.1.0/_
│ └─ has-ansi -> ../has-ansi@2.0.0/_
└─ chalk -> .store/chalk@1.1.1/_
In the example above, this allows ansi-styles
to require('has-ansi')
. This is necessary to make certain packages work, such as standard (eslint + eslint-config-standard).