In the next version of yarn ("berry") the manual states that one should just commit the directory created called .yarn, but if you use the multi-version setup for yarn, this directory contains the file releases/yarn-berry.js which seems to be the entire berry version of yarn, taking up more than 2MB of disk.
This just seems really wrong - why should I commit a package manager to git, just to get it to work?
The Yarn developers explain the rationale for this in the Installation docs, in the section called "About global installs":
Using a single package manager across your system has always been a problem. To be stable, installs need to be run with the same package manager version across environments, otherwise there's a risk we introduce accidental breaking changes between versions - after all, that's why the concept of lockfile was introduced in the first place! And with Yarn being in a sense your very first project dependency, it should make sense to "lock it" as well.
Once Yarn is tracked and "locked" as a per-project dependency, it ends up getting committed to Git if you follow Yarn 2's zero-install strategy, the rationale for which is explained here.
I'm a newcomer to Yarn, but I spent years working devops, helping developers figure out why their code would sometimes build correctly on half of the team's laptops but not on the other half, or would suddenly start failing to build in CI while continuing to work elsewhere. Trying to keep the version of npm consistent across every computer and codebase in the company was essentially impossible, given that Node is constantly being upgraded, but locking each project to its own specific version of Yarn -- which, by being committed to Git, is guaranteed to be available in every checkout of that project -- solves this problem.
I have written a small tool for those people who don't want to commit Yarn 2+ binary into their git repos, while still benefiting from sticking Yarn version per project. If you already have Yarn 2+ configured in your project just don't want to commit it, you can run:
yarn dlx pinyarn
This command will generate .pinyarn.js (4KB) which you should commit, instead. .pinyarn.js will contain URLs inside to download Yarn 2+ and its plugins from the official Yarn Berry GitHub repo. .pinyarn.js will download binary and plugins from these URLs if they are not downloaded yet.
You can also specify which version of Yarn 2+ you want via:
yarn dlx pinyarn 3 - the latest released Yarn 3 version, or
yarn dlx pinyarn 2.2.2 - version 2.2.2, or
yarn dlx master - version from latest sources, or
yarn dlx 1638 - version from Pull Request 1638
The pinyarn tool repo on GitHub:
https://github.com/sysgears/pinyarn
The official documentation mentions what's should be ignored and what should be committed. It can solve this problem I think.
https://yarnpkg.com/getting-started/qa#which-files-should-be-gitignored
The new docs states using node's newest corepack feature (to date).
This means that when using appropriate node you only need to place a valid packageManager field value in package.json and run corepack enable, e.g.
{
"name": "foo",
"packageManager": "yarn#3.2.0",
"scripts": {
...
}
}
Related
I am using yarn to install a package from a .tgz. When I update the package and install it again, yarn uses an old cached version of the package. Here is a report from someone running into a similar problem. If I try to delete the package from the cache, it gives me errors, and if I use yarn cache clean it will clear the whole cache, which is also not what I want.
The reason the package is changing is that I am developing it, and don't want to bump the version number every five minutes. I read maybe newer yarn versions take the package hash into account when installing, but I am stuck with version 1.22.1 (actually jlpm which is JupyterLab's vendored version of yarn).
Is there a way to say yarn add package-0.1.0.tgz --dont-use-cache? Or should I just skip yarn and use npm, or something else on top?
At the top of my yarn.lock file I see:
__metadata:
version: 5
cacheKey: 8
I have no idea what the version or cacheKey is, and I haven't found any documentation for them on yarn's website. What are they?
It's simply the yarn.lock version, originally introduced here:
When upgraded, the lockfile entries have to be resolved again (but the specific versions are still pinned, no worry). Bump it when you change the fields within the Package type; no more no less.
More details on the currently implemented resolution logic:
github.com/yarnpkg/berry/blob/master/packages/yarnpkg-core/sources/Project.ts
Typical scenario
My lockfile version updated locally because my latest Homebrew Yarn version was running behind on 3.2.0-rc.10, despite running brew upgrade and yarn -v still showing this older version.
However a bot (might be team member) already upgraded Yarn to 3.2.0-rc.12, versioned / committed / locked remotely in .yarnrc.yml and npm.packageManager (example).
This is what we want for consistency, so we could add a package.json script to use it instead
// ...
"scripts": {
// ...
"setup": "yarn",
// ...
// ...
If frequently switching between classic, stable and canary - cd ~ && yarn set version <ver> may bump your local Yarn version too (then remember to clear generated files).
I have been using npm for a personal project and just recently stumbled across yarn. Would there be any harm or "intended side effects" to switching to yarn's package manager in the same project where I had been using npm?
Although a few commenters here say its ok to mix both yarn and npm on the same project, after using yarn and npm and then yarn again, this is what yarn has to say about it:
warning package-lock.json found. Your project contains lock files generated by tools
other than Yarn. It is advised not to mix package managers in order to avoid resolution
inconsistencies caused by unsynchronized lock files. To clear this warning, remove
package-lock.json.
Since to me it is not any harm to using both them into one project.
I use npm and yarn (50/50) in dev environment.
But on ci/di i use only yarn because it is faster, and i reduce build minutes thanks yarn.
Also they both create different .lock file names.
Nobody told about the lock files.
Imagine you use yarn on dev environment, and yarn on your build/production servers. When you install a package using yarn, and your project works on your computer, you probably would want to keep it working on a production environment (your server).
That being sad, you would commit you yarn.lock file, that "saves" the exact versions of each package you have, when the project ran on your computer.
On your buid/production server you should call yarn install, but asking to keep all the same versions with --frozen-lockfile parameter. Some even say "yarn install --frozen-lockfile should be the default behavior", and I agree.
Then... another dev jump in the project you are working and install a package using npm (other than yarn). That new package will not be included in your yarn.lock file, but, a new package-json.lock file would be created, telling the exact packages versions it is using.
When that commit arrives on your build/production server, it will crash, fail, because that new package doesn't exist on yarn.lock file. Someone would need to pull that changes, call a yarn to install the dependences and update the lock file with the new package dependences, and push it again to the repo.
A quick point about using the lock file or not. If you call a 'yarn install' on your build/production server some weeks after the last install on your machine, the server would have many other new versions than your last "stable" version. It already happened to me many times.
I published recently the package-locks-checks, which help ensure you have not just one lock file but also locked each package version on your project.
There will be a point that one or both will no longer work and your project will be stuck at only using the existing lock file. Meaning, the issue probably will involve installation fails if you opt to reinstall without a lock file. And that also means failure to create a new lock file, so you are stuck with the existing one that you are trying to get rid off in the first place. We are actually encountering this issue in one of our projects. Because it is so big, no one tries to fix the issue and just rely on the existing lock file.
So, even if we say it's a rare case that it won't cause harm. Mixing npm and yarn should be avoided.
Here https://classic.yarnpkg.com/en/docs/migrating-from-npm/ we may find a confirmation that Yarn's resolution algorithm is compatible with NPM resolution algorithm.
Inside a npm project (with package.json) if you run yarn it will read your node_modules folder (using the resolution algorithm) and create a yarn.lock file with your project's locked dependency tree.
Based on that I assume that they are compatible inside the same project.
Update 30/04/2021
My original reply refers to yarn 1 (classic), although I've just created a React app with create-react-app tool and it creates the project's repository with package.json + yarn.lock by default. Again, another demonstration that it's fine (even with the warning mentioned by Dave Pile).
At the end of the day this is a matter of putting both together to work and checking yourself...
Plus you get a warning from yarn as Dave Pile said because we have to push *-lock.json files changes you have to consider using npm version >= 7 to make sure whenever you install packages by npm it will update your yarn-lock.json file too.
Because whenever you install the packages either by npm or yarn depends on what you have chosen for updating a dependency in the package.json (Using tilde ( ~ ) which gives you bug fix releases and caret ( ^ ) gives you backward-compatible new functionality) it will update you.lock file and since you have to push it might happen that you have different version of lock files.
Say I have a package.json file in an existing project. In there I have "some-package": "^1.0-01",, however I know that the latest version is 1.0-02
So I do yarn upgrade. However, package.json is not update, and still references the -01 version. The yarn.lock file however shows this:
some-package#^1.0-01:
version "1.0-02"
Is this expected behavior? When someone else does the yarn command, which version will they get. If they get the latest version, isn't it misleading to show -01 in package.json?
According to the documentation here,
yarn upgrade
This command updates all dependencies to their latest version based on
the version range specified in the package.json file. The yarn.lock
file will be recreated as well.
The tricky part is based on the version range specified in the package.json
This means that if your package.json has defined a particular semver like you've said, upgrade will only upgrade it according to the range defined there, i.e. ^1.0-01 should upgrade to 1.0-02 in both your package.json and yarn.lock files.
Now you've said that this is happening only in your yarn.lock file. Yarn provides a utility for checking for such clashes called check
Could you try running
yarn check
in your repository and tell us your findings?
Yarn creates a yarn.lock file after you perform a yarn install.
Should this be committed to the repository or ignored? What is it for?
Yes, you should check it in, see Migrating from npm
What is it for?
The npm client installs dependencies into the node_modules directory non-deterministically. This means that based on the order dependencies are installed, the structure of a node_modules directory could be different from one person to another. These differences can cause works on my machine bugs that take a long time to hunt down.
Yarn resolves these issues around versioning and non-determinism by using lock files and an install algorithm that is deterministic and reliable. These lock files lock the installed dependencies to a specific version and ensure that every install results in the exact same file structure in node_modules across all machines.
Depends on what your project is:
Is your project an application? Then: Yes
Is your project a library? If so: No
A more elaborate description of this can be found in this GitHub issue where one of the creators of Yarn eg. says:
The package.json describes the intended versions desired by the original author, while yarn.lock describes the last-known-good configuration for a given application.
Only the yarn.lock-file of the top level project will be used. So unless ones project will be used standalone and not be installed into another project, then there's no use in committing any yarn.lock-file – instead it will always be up to the package.json-file to convey what versions of dependencies the project expects then.
I see these are two separate questions in one. Let me answer both.
Should you commit the file into repo?
Yes. As mentioned in ckuijjer's answer it is recommended in Migration Guide to include this file into repo. Read on to understand why you need to do it.
What is yarn.lock?
It is a file that stores the exact dependency versions for your project together with checksums for each package. This is yarn's way to provide consistency for your dependencies.
To understand why this file is needed you first need to understand what was the problem behind original NPM's package.json. When you install the package, NPM will store the range of allowed revisions of a dependency instead of a specific revision (semver). NPM will try to fetch update the dependency latest version of dependency within the specified range (i.e. non-breaking patch updates). There are two problems with this approach.
Dependency authors might release patch version updates while in fact introducing a breaking change that will affect your project.
Two developers running npm install at different times may get the different set of dependencies. Which may cause a bug to be not reproducible on two exactly same environments. This will might cause build stability issues for CI servers for example.
Yarn on the other hand takes the route of maximum predictability. It creates yarn.lock file to save the exact dependency versions. Having that file in place yarn will use versions stored in yarn.lock instead of resolving versions from package.json. This strategy guarantees that none of the issues described above happen.
yarn.lock is similar to npm-shrinkwrap.json that can be created by npm shrinkwrap command. Check this answer explaining the differences between these two files.
You should:
add it to the repository and commit it
use yarn install --frozen-lockfile and NOT yarn install as a default both locally and on CI build servers.
(I opened a ticket on yarn's issue tracker to make a case to make frozen-lockfile default behavior, see #4147).
Beware to NOT set the frozen-lockfile flag in the .yarnrc file as that would prevent you from being able to sync the package.json and yarn.lock file. See the related yarn issue on github
yarn install may mutate your yarn.lock unexpectedly, making yarn claims of repeatable builds null and void. You should only use yarn install to initialize a yarn.lock and to update it.
Also, esp. in larger teams, you may have a lot of noise around changes in the yarn lock only because a developer was setting up their local project.
For further information, read upon my answer about npm's package-lock.json as that applies here as well.
This was also recently made clear in the docs for yarn install:
yarn install
Install all the dependencies listed within package.json
in the local node_modules folder.
The yarn.lock file is utilized as follows:
If yarn.lock is present and is enough to satisfy all the dependencies
listed in package.json, the exact versions recorded in yarn.lock are
installed, and yarn.lock will be unchanged. Yarn will not check for
newer versions.
If yarn.lock is absent, or is not enough to satisfy
all the dependencies listed in package.json (for example, if you
manually add a dependency to package.json), Yarn looks for the newest
versions available that satisfy the constraints in package.json. The
results are written to yarn.lock.
If you want to ensure yarn.lock is not updated, use --frozen-lockfile.
From My experience I would say yes we should commit yarn.lock file. It will ensure that, when other people use your project they will get the same dependencies as your project expected.
From the Doc
When you run either yarn or yarn add , Yarn will generate a yarn.lock file within the root directory of your package. You don’t need to read or understand this file - just check it into source control. When other people start using Yarn instead of npm, the yarn.lock file will ensure that they get precisely the same dependencies as you have.
One argue could be, that we can achieve it by replacing ^ with --. Yes we can, but in general, we have seen that majority of npm packages comes with ^ notation, and we have to change notation manually for ensuring static dependency version.But if you use yarn.lock it will programatically ensure your correct version.
Also as Eric Elliott said here
Don’t .gitignore yarn.lock. It is there to ensure deterministic dependency resolution to avoid “works on my machine” bugs.
Not to play the devil's advocate, but I have slowly (over the years) come around to the idea that you should NOT commit the lock files.
I know every bit of documentation they have says that you should. But what good can it possibly do?! And the downsides far outweigh the benefits, in my opinion.
Basically, I have spent countless hours debugging issues that have eventually been solved by deleting lock files. For example, the lock files can contain information about which package registry to use, and in an enterprise environment where different users access different registries, it's a recipe for disaster.
Additionally, the lock files can really mess up your dependency tree. Because yarn and npm create a complex tree and keep external modules of different versions in different places (e.g. in the node_modules folder within a module in the top node_modules folder of your app), if you update dependencies frequently, it can create a real mess. Again, I have spent tons of time trying to figure out what an old version of a module was still being used in a dependency wherein the module version had been updated, only to find that deleting the lock file and the node_modules folder solved all the hard-to-diagnose problems.
I even have shell aliases now that delete the lock files (and sometimes node_modules folders as well!) before running yarn or npm.
Just the other side of the coin, I guess, but blindly following this dogma can cost you........
I'd guess yes, since Yarn versions its own yarn.lock file:
https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn
It's used for deterministic package dependency resolution.
Yes! yarn.lock must be checked in so any developer who installs the dependencies get the exact same output! With npm [that was available in Oct 2016], for instance, you can have a patch version (say 1.2.0) installed locally while a new developer running a fresh install might get a different version (1.2.1).
Yes, You should commit it. For more about yarn.lock file, refer the official docs here