Package managers are incredibly popular tools, especially in the frontend JavaScript communities. They make it easier for developers to install, update, configure and uninstall code modules within their applications. They do so by communicating with a registry of code modules and manage the various dependencies code modules usually have.
The most popular JavaScript package managers are NPM and Bower. However, a new package manager has been developed by Facebook, in collaboration with Exponent, Google and Tilde. We expect its popularity to grow in 2017.
Yarn aims to address issues Facebook have experienced with NPM, particularly in areas such as performance, security, and consistency. This new package manager still has access to the NPM and Bower registries.
For example, when using NPM, depending on the order in which modules are installed, developers might end up with two different versions of a particular module in their local development environment. This can cause issues where everything works fine on one developer’s machine but not on another’s. To address this issue, Yarn uses lockfiles to tie modules to a specific version within a project, thus assuring that the same version is installed on all developers machines.
Article Credit: Alexandre Ouellette
