[Feature]: package manager switch

[Hotell]

Describe the feature that you would like added

ATM we use yarn midgard (msft fork of yarn v1 ) - it seems it doesn't have much traction from both feature additions/supporting the package.

"outside of fluent" family of packages maintained by core team uses yarn v3. It would be nice to unify on what package manager is used across our scope of projects.

"on paper" yarn 3 / pnpm should be faster and provide more richer feature set for our needs.

Features we are looking for:

• fastest possible installs
  • cold cache
  • switching branches
• proper dependency deduplication
• lowest disk size usage
• ability to patch installed packages
• workspaces support
• stricter dependency enforcement to avoid ghost dependencies and potential bugs/security issues
• compatibility with single version policy approach

Have you discussed this feature with our team

v-build

Additional context

No response

Validations

• [X] Check that there isn't already an issue that request the same feature to avoid creating a duplicate.

Priority

None

[Hotell]

I've done some research/experimentation during FHL and tried to migrate our repo to following package managers:

• yarn 3 https://github.com/hotell/fluentui/tree/hotell/package-managers/yarn-3 , yarn 4 https://github.com/hotell/fluentui/tree/hotell/package-managers/yarn-4
• pnpm https://github.com/hotell/fluentui/tree/hotell/package-managers/pnpm
• bun v1 https://github.com/hotell/fluentui/tree/hotell/package-managers/bun

Benchmarks

run on macos M1 MAX

package manager	install (no cache)	install (cache)	node_modules size
yarn 1 - midgard (Baseline)	114s	31s	1.3 GB
yarn 3 (nodeLinker: node-modules)	74s 🚅 (35% speed increase)	44s 🚨 (42% speed decrease)	1.7 GB 🚨 (31% size increase)
yarn 4 rc (nodeLinker: node-modules)	94s 🚅 (18% speed increase)	45s 🚨 (45% speed decrease)	1.7 GB 🚨 (31% size increase)
pnpm	88s 🚅 (23% speed increase)	28s 🚅 (10% speed increase)	1.1 GB 🚅 (15% size decrease)
bun	36s 🚅🚅 (68% speed increase)	14s 🚅🚅 (54% speed increase)	3.1 GB 🚨 (138% size increase)

yarn v1 - midgard

pros:

• works the same as normal yarn
• faster than v1

cons:

• ghost dependencies / potential security issues
• nohoist doesn't properly work in some use-cases (react 18 and 17 types)
• no native proper dedupe mechanism
• no native package patching
• no workspace:* protocol

yarn 3

pros:

• relatively convenient switch for contributors
• nodeLinker node-modules is relatively easy for migration
• workspace:* protocol
• native package patching

cons:

• packages (and their binaries) installed only in root package.json don't work when executing from within workspace scope. They need to be explicitly defined per workspace "scripts" via yarn run -T <binary-name>
  • this should work with PNP mode though
• confusing behaviours when workspace packages are used within workspace configuration source - things work although they should not as nor root nor workspace package.json doesn't have specified those as dependencies
• nodeLinker pnpm triggers lots of errors (in comparison with native pnpm pm)

pnpm (v8)

pros:

• excellent node_modules size reduction ( thanks to shared storage )

• zero ghost dependencies within workspaces

• workspace:* protocol

• nicely complements single version policy approach

  • packages (and their binaries) installed only in root package.json just work when executing from within workspace

    • pnpm --filter @fluentui/react-text exec tsc -v works

    •   "@fluentui/scripts-prettier": "workspace:*",
        "@fluentui/scripts-storybook": "workspace:*",
        "@fluentui/scripts-babel": "workspace:*",
      

      adding workspace packages to root /package.json makes them available globally within any workspaces

• patching packages is build-in

• lerna support

cons:

• inconvenient switch for contributors ?

bun (v1)

pros:

• install speed is superior to any existing pm
• one can use yarn v1 "as is" for task execution (incl workspaces) etc

cons:

• having 2 "pm" in monorepo/ci is confusing
• huge node_modules size delta
• implications how to declare dependencies

more details:

• every workspace dependency needs to use workspace:* protocol to enable hoisting
• every non workspace dependency needs to have exactly same version specified as in root package.json to properly enable hoisting
• one of reasons of significant node_modules size increase
• react-northstar doesn't uses workspaces and lerna is not supported via bun ( additional work needed to migrate N* to bun/yarn workspaces)
  • one of reasons of significant node_modules size increase

Summary

Based on initial benchmarks and our use cases testing it looks like we have 3 options:

• continue using yarn midgard
• switch to pnpm
• once bun ships full package manager functionality for monorepos we might consider switching
  • https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/issues/533
  • https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/issues/2450

All of those option will nicely complement to our goal to adopt single version policy.

[Bessonov]

I am wondering how you have checked the size for bun. bun uses hardlinks, which can lead to incorrect size measurements.

Personally, I think pnpm is a great choice, and bun is far from being stable.

[Hotell]

I am wondering how you have checked the size for bun.

great question ! I used simple find . -name "node_modules" -type d -prune -print | xargs du -chs

yeah adding bun to the metrics was just pure experiment.

---

I run yarn 3 with various nmMode as well do get further metrics:

nmMode	size
classic	1.7 GB
hardlinks-local	1.1 GB (same as pnpm)
hardlins-global	1.1 GB

[Bessonov]

Ok, this should work. Don't forget to look at ~/.bun/install/cache/ and ~/.cache/pnpm/metadata/ :+1:

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