.npmrc

.npmrc

pnpm gets its configuration from the command line, environment variables, and .npmrc files.

The pnpm config command can be used to update and edit the contents of the user and global .npmrc files.

The four relevant files are:

per-project configuration file (/path/to/my/project/.npmrc)
per-workspace configuration file (the directory that contains the pnpm-workspace.yaml file)
per-user configuration file (~/.npmrc)
global configuration file (/etc/npmrc)

All .npmrc files are an INI-formatted list of key = value parameters.

Dependency Hoisting Settings

hoist

Default: true
Type: boolean

When true, all dependencies are hoisted to node_modules/.pnpm. This makes unlisted dependencies accessible to all packages inside node_modules.

hoist-pattern

Default: [‘*‘]
Type: string[]

Tells pnpm which packages should be hoisted to node_modules/.pnpm. By default, all packages are hoisted - however, if you know that only some flawed packages have phantom dependencies, you can use this option to exclusively hoist the phantom dependencies (recommended).

For instance:

hoist-pattern[]=*eslint*
hoist-pattern[]=*babel*

Since v7.12.0, you may also exclude patterns from hoisting using !.

For instance:

hoist-pattern[]=*types*
hoist-pattern[]=!@types/react

public-hoist-pattern

Default: [‘*eslint*‘, ‘*prettier*‘]
Type: string[]

Unlike hoist-pattern, which hoists dependencies to a hidden modules directory inside the virtual store, public-hoist-pattern hoists dependencies matching the pattern to the root modules directory. Hoisting to the root modules directory means that application code will have access to phantom dependencies, even if they modify the resolution strategy improperly.

This setting is useful when dealing with some flawed pluggable tools that don’t resolve dependencies properly.

For instance:

public-hoist-pattern[]=*plugin*

Note: Setting shamefully-hoist to true is the same as setting public-hoist-pattern to *.

Since v7.12.0, you may also exclude patterns from hoisting using !.

For instance:

public-hoist-pattern[]=*types*
public-hoist-pattern[]=!@types/react

shamefully-hoist

Default: false
Type: Boolean

By default, pnpm creates a semistrict node_modules, meaning dependencies have access to undeclared dependencies but modules outside of node_modules do not. With this layout, most of the packages in the ecosystem work with no issues. However, if some tooling only works when the hoisted dependencies are in the root of node_modules, you can set this to true to hoist them for you.

Node-Modules Settings

store-dir

Default:
- If the $XDG_DATA_HOME env variable is set, then $XDG_DATA_HOME/pnpm/store
- On Windows: ~/AppData/Local/pnpm/store
- On macOS: ~/Library/pnpm/store
- On Linux: ~/.local/share/pnpm/store
Type: path

The location where all the packages are saved on the disk.

The store should be always on the same disk on which installation is happening, so there will be one store per disk. If there is a home directory on the current disk, then the store is created inside it. If there is no home on the disk, then the store is created at the root of the filesystem. For example, if installation is happening on a filesystem mounted at /mnt, then the store will be created at /mnt/.pnpm-store. The same goes for Windows systems.

It is possible to set a store from a different disk but in that case pnpm will copy packages from the store instead of hard-linking them, as hard links are only possible on the same filesystem.

modules-dir

Default: node_modules
Type: path

The directory in which dependencies will be installed (instead of node_modules).

node-linker

Default: isolated
Type: isolated, hoisted, pnp

Defines what linker should be used for installing Node packages.

isolated - dependencies are symlinked from a virtual store at node_modules/.pnpm.
hoisted - a flat node_modules without symlinks is created. Same as the node_modules created by npm or Yarn Classic. One of Yarn’s libraries is used for hoisting, when this setting is used. Legitimate reasons to use this setting:
1. Your tooling doesn’t work well with symlinks. A React Native project will most probably only work if you use a hoisted node_modules.
2. Your project is deployed to a serverless hosting provider. Some serverless providers (for instance, AWS Lambda) don’t support symlinks. An alternative solution for this problem is to bundle your application before deployment.
3. If you want to publish your package with “bundledDependencies”.
4. If you are running Node.js with the --preserve-symlinks flag.
pnp - no node_modules. Plug’n’Play is an innovative strategy for Node that is used by Yarn Berry. It is recommended to also set symlink setting to false when using pnp as your linker.

symlink

Default: true
Type: Boolean

When symlink is set to false, pnpm creates a virtual store directory without any symlinks. It is a useful setting together with node-linker=pnp.

enable-modules-dir

Default: true
Type: Boolean

When false, pnpm will not write any files to the modules directory (node_modules). This is useful for when the modules directory is mounted with filesystem in userspace (FUSE). There is an experimental CLI that allows you to mount a modules directory with FUSE: @pnpm/mount-modules.

virtual-store-dir

Default: node_modules/.pnpm
Types: path

The directory with links to the store. All direct and indirect dependencies of the project are linked into this directory.

This is a useful setting that can solve issues with long paths on Windows. If you have some dependencies with very long paths, you can select a virtual store in the root of your drive (for instance C:\my-project-store).

Or you can set the virtual store to .pnpm and add it to .gitignore. This will make stacktraces cleaner as paths to dependencies will be one directory higher.

NOTE: the virtual store cannot be shared between several projects. Every project should have its own virtual store (except for in workspaces where the root is shared).

package-import-method

Default: auto
Type: auto, hardlink, copy, clone, clone-or-copy

Controls the way packages are imported from the store (if you want to disable symlinks inside node_modules, then you need to change the node-linker setting, not this one).

auto - try to clone packages from the store. If cloning is not supported then hardlink packages from the store. If neither cloning nor linking is possible, fall back to copying
hardlink - hard link packages from the store
clone-or-copy - try to clone packages from the store. If cloning is not supported then fall back to copying
copy - copy packages from the store
clone - clone (AKA copy-on-write or reference link) packages from the store

Cloning is the best way to write packages to node_modules. It is the fastest way and safest way. When cloning is used, you may edit files in your node_modules and they will not be modified in the central content-addressable store.

Unfortunately, not all file systems support cloning. We recommend using a copy-on-write (CoW) file system (for instance, Btrfs instead of Ext4 on Linux) for the best experience with pnpm.

info

Even though macOS supports cloning, there is currently a bug in Node.js that prevents us from using it in pnpm. If you have ideas how to fix it, help us.

modules-cache-max-age

Default: 10080 (7 days in minutes)
Type: number

The time in minutes after which orphan packages from the modules directory should be removed. pnpm keeps a cache of packages in the modules directory. This boosts installation speed when switching branches or downgrading dependencies.

Lockfile Settings

lockfile

Default: true
Type: Boolean

When set to false, pnpm won’t read or generate a pnpm-lock.yaml file.

prefer-frozen-lockfile

Default: true
Type: Boolean

When set to true and the available pnpm-lock.yaml satisfies the package.json dependencies directive, a headless installation is performed. A headless installation skips all dependency resolution as it does not need to modify the lockfile.

lockfile-include-tarball-url

Added in: v7.6.0

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Add the full URL to the package’s tarball to every entry in pnpm-lock.yaml.

use-lockfile-v6

Added in: v7.24.0

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Use the new v6 lockfile format, which will be the default one in pnpm v8. This new format is more readable as it doesn’t use hashes to shorten long dependency paths.

Registry & Authentication Settings

registry

Default: https://registry.npmjs.org/
Type: url

The base URL of the npm package registry (trailing slash included).

<scope>:registry

The npm registry that should be used for packages of the specified scope. For example, setting @babel:registry=https://example.com/packages/npm/ will enforce that when you use pnpm add @babel/core, or any @babel scoped package, the package will be fetched from https://example.com/packages/npm instead of the default registry.

<URL>:_authToken

Define the authentication bearer token to use when accessing the specified registry. For example:

//registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

You may also use an environment variable. For example:

//registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=${NPM_TOKEN}

Or you may just use an environment variable directly, without changing .npmrc at all:

npm_config_//registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

<URL>:tokenHelper

A token helper is an executable which outputs an auth token. This can be used in situations where the authToken is not a constant value but is something that refreshes regularly, where a script or other tool can use an existing refresh token to obtain a new access token.

The configuration for the path to the helper must be an absolute path, with no arguments. In order to be secure, it is only permitted to set this value in the user .npmrc. Otherwise a project could place a value in a project’s local .npmrc and run arbitrary executables.

Setting a token helper for the default registry:

tokenHelper=/home/ivan/token-generator

Setting a token helper for the specified registry:

//registry.corp.com:tokenHelper=/home/ivan/token-generator

Request Settings

ca

Default: The npm CA certificate
Type: String, Array or null

The Certificate Authority signing certificate that is trusted for SSL connections to the registry. Values should be in PEM format (AKA “Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER)”). For example:

ca="-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\nXXXX\nXXXX\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----"

Set to null to only allow known registrars, or to a specific CA cert to trust only that specific signing authority.

Multiple CAs can be trusted by specifying an array of certificates:

ca[]="..."
ca[]="..."

cafile

Default: null
Type: path

A path to a file containing one or multiple Certificate Authority signing certificates. Similar to the ca setting, but allows for multiple CAs, as well as for the CA information to be stored in a file instead of being specified via CLI.

cert

Default: null
Type: String

A client certificate to pass when accessing the registry. Values should be in PEM format (AKA “Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER)”). For example:

cert="-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\nXXXX\nXXXX\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----"

It is not the path to a certificate file (and there is no certfile option).

key

Default: null
Type: String

A client key to pass when accessing the registry. Values should be in PEM format (AKA “Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER)”). For example:

key="-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nXXXX\nXXXX\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----"

It is not the path to a key file (and there is no keyfile option).

This setting contains sensitive information. Don’t write it to a local .npmrc file committed to the repository.

git-shallow-hosts

Default: [‘github.com’, ‘gist.github.com’, ‘gitlab.com’, ‘bitbucket.com’, ‘bitbucket.org’]
Type: string[]

When fetching dependencies that are Git repositories, if the host is listed in this setting, pnpm will use shallow cloning to fetch only the needed commit, not all the history.

https-proxy

Default: null
Type: url

A proxy to use for outgoing HTTPS requests. If the HTTPS_PROXY, https_proxy, HTTP_PROXY or http_proxy environment variables are set, their values will be used instead.

If your proxy URL contains a username and password, make sure to URL-encode them. For instance:

https-proxy=https://use%21r:pas%2As@my.proxy:1234/foo

Do not encode the colon (:) between the username and password.

http-proxy

proxy

Default: null
Type: url

A proxy to use for outgoing http requests. If the HTTP_PROXY or http_proxy environment variables are set, proxy settings will be honored by the underlying request library.

local-address

Default: undefined
Type: IP Address

The IP address of the local interface to use when making connections to the npm registry.

maxsockets

Default: network-concurrency x 3
Type: Number

The maximum number of connections to use per origin (protocol/host/port combination).

noproxy

Default: null
Type: String

A comma-separated string of domain extensions that a proxy should not be used for.

strict-ssl

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Whether or not to do SSL key validation when making requests to the registry via HTTPS.

network-concurrency

Default: 16
Type: Number

Controls the maximum number of HTTP(S) requests to process simultaneously.

fetch-retries

Default: 2
Type: Number

How many times to retry if pnpm fails to fetch from the registry.

fetch-retry-factor

Default: 10
Type: Number

The exponential factor for retry backoff.

fetch-retry-mintimeout

Default: 10000 (10 seconds)
Type: Number

The minimum (base) timeout for retrying requests.

fetch-retry-maxtimeout

Default: 60000 (1 minute)
Type: Number

The maximum fallback timeout to ensure the retry factor does not make requests too long.

fetch-timeout

Default: 60000 (1 minute)
Type: Number

The maximum amount of time to wait for HTTP requests to complete.

Peer Dependency Settings

auto-install-peers

Default: false
Type: Boolean

When true, any missing non-optional peer dependencies are automatically installed.

strict-peer-dependencies

Default: false (was true from v7.0.0 until v7.13.5)
Type: Boolean

If this is enabled, commands will fail if there is a missing or invalid peer dependency in the tree.

resolve-peers-from-workspace-root

Added in: v7.23.0

Default: false
Type: Boolean

When enabled, dependencies of the root workspace project are used to resolve peer dependencies of any projects in the workspace. It is a useful feature as you can install your peer dependencies only in the root of the workspace, and you can be sure that all projects in the workspace use the same versions of the peer dependencies.

CLI Settings

[no-]color

Default: auto
Type: auto, always, never

Controls colors in the output.

auto - output uses colors when the standard output is a terminal or TTY.
always - ignore the difference between terminals and pipes. You’ll rarely want this; in most scenarios, if you want color codes in your redirected output, you can instead pass a --color flag to the pnpm command to force it to use color codes. The default setting is almost always what you’ll want.
never - turns off colors. This is the setting used by --no-color.

loglevel

Default: info
Type: debug, info, warn, error

Any logs at or higher than the given level will be shown. You can instead pass --silent to turn off all output logs.

use-beta-cli

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Experimental option that enables beta features of the CLI. This means that you may get some changes to the CLI functionality that are breaking changes, or potentially bugs.

recursive-install

Default: true
Type: Boolean

If this is enabled, the primary behaviour of pnpm install becomes that of pnpm install -r, meaning the install is performed on all workspace or subdirectory packages.

Else, pnpm install will exclusively build the package in the current directory.

engine-strict

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If this is enabled, pnpm will not install any package that claims to not be compatible with the current Node version.

Regardless of this configuration, installation will always fail if a project (not a dependency) specifies an incompatible version in its engines field.

npm-path

Type: path

The location of the npm binary that pnpm uses for some actions, like publishing.

Build Settings

ignore-scripts

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Do not execute any scripts defined in the project package.json and its dependencies.

note

This flag does not prevent the execution of .pnpmfile.cjs

ignore-dep-scripts

Added in: v7.9.0

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Do not execute any scripts of the installed packages. Scripts of the projects are executed.

child-concurrency

Default: 5
Type: Number

The maximum number of child processes to allocate simultaneously to build node_modules.

side-effects-cache

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Use and cache the results of (pre/post)install hooks.

side-effects-cache-readonly

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Only use the side effects cache if present, do not create it for new packages.

unsafe-perm

Default: false IF running as root, ELSE true
Type: Boolean

Set to true to enable UID/GID switching when running package scripts. If set explicitly to false, then installing as a non-root user will fail.

Node.js Settings

use-node-version

Default: undefined
Type: semver

Specifies which exact Node.js version should be used for the project’s runtime. pnpm will automatically install the specified version of Node.js and use it for running pnpm run commands or the pnpm node command.

This may be used instead of .nvmrc and nvm. Instead of the following .nvmrc file:

16.16.0

Use this .npmrc file:

use-node-version=16.16.0

node-version

Default: the value returned by node -v, without the v prefix
Type: semver

The Node.js version to use when checking a package’s engines setting.

If you want to prevent contributors of your project from adding new incompatible dependencies, use node-version and engine-strict in a .npmrc file at the root of the project:

node-version=12.22.0
engine-strict=true

This way, even if someone is using Node.js v16, they will not be able to install a new dependency that doesn’t support Node.js v12.22.0.

node-mirror:<releaseDir>

Default: https://nodejs.org/download/<releaseDir>/
Type: URL

Sets the base URL for downloading Node.js. The <releaseDir> portion of this setting can be any directory from https://nodejs.org/download: release, rc, nightly, v8-canary, etc.

Here is how pnpm may be configured to download Node.js from Node.js mirror in China:

node-mirror:release=https://npmmirror.com/mirrors/node/
node-mirror:rc=https://npmmirror.com/mirrors/node-rc/
node-mirror:nightly=https://npmmirror.com/mirrors/node-nightly/

Workspace Settings

link-workspace-packages

Default: true
Type: true, false, deep

If this is enabled, locally available packages are linked to node_modules instead of being downloaded from the registry. This is very convenient in a monorepo. If you need local packages to also be linked to subdependencies, you can use the deep setting.

Else, packages are downloaded and installed from the registry. However, workspace packages can still be linked by using the workspace: range protocol.

prefer-workspace-packages

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If this is enabled, local packages from the workspace are preferred over packages from the registry, even if there is a newer version of the package in the registry.

This setting is only useful if the workspace doesn’t use save-workspace-protocol.

shared-workspace-lockfile

Default: true
Type: Boolean

If this is enabled, pnpm creates a single pnpm-lock.yaml file in the root of the workspace. This also means that all dependencies of workspace packages will be in a single node_modules (and get symlinked to their package node_modules folder for Node’s module resolution).

Advantages of this option:

every dependency is a singleton
faster installations in a monorepo
fewer changes in code reviews as they are all in one file

note

Even though all the dependencies will be hard linked into the root node_modules, packages will have access only to those dependencies that are declared in their package.json, so pnpm’s strictness is preserved. This is a result of the aforementioned symbolic linking.

save-workspace-protocol

Default: true
Type: true, false, rolling

This setting controls how dependencies that are linked from the workspace are added to package.json.

If foo@1.0.0 is in the workspace and you run pnpm add foo in another project of the workspace, below is how foo will be added to the dependencies field. The save-prefix setting also influences how the spec is created.

save-workspace-protocol	save-prefix	spec
false	`‘’`	`1.0.0`
false	`‘~’`	`~1.0.0`
false	`‘^’`	`^1.0.0`
true	`‘’`	`workspace:1.0.0`
true	`‘~’`	`workspace:~1.0.0`
true	`‘^’`	`workspace:^1.0.0`
rolling	`‘’`	`workspace:*`
rolling	`‘~’`	`workspace:~`
rolling	`‘^’`	`workspace:^`

include-workspace-root

Added in: v7.4.0

Default: false
Type: Boolean

When executing commands recursively in a workspace, execute them on the root workspace project as well.

Other Settings

use-running-store-server

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Only allows installation with a store server. If no store server is running, installation will fail.

save-prefix

Default: ‘^’
Type: String

Configure how versions of packages installed to a package.json file get prefixed.

For example, if a package has version 1.2.3, by default its version is set to ^1.2.3 which allows minor upgrades for that package, but after pnpm config set save-prefix='~' it would be set to ~1.2.3 which only allows patch upgrades.

This setting is ignored when the added package has a range specified. For instance, pnpm add foo@2 will set the version of foo in package.json to 2, regardless of the value of save-prefix.

global-dir

Default:
- If the $XDG_DATA_HOME env variable is set, then $XDG_DATA_HOME/pnpm/global
- On Windows: ~/AppData/Local/pnpm/global
- On macOS: ~/Library/pnpm/global
- On Linux: ~/.local/share/pnpm/global
Type: path

Specify a custom directory to store global packages.

global-bin-dir

Default:
- If the $XDG_DATA_HOME env variable is set, then $XDG_DATA_HOME/pnpm
- On Windows: ~/AppData/Local/pnpm
- On macOS: ~/Library/pnpm
- On Linux: ~/.local/share/pnpm
Type: path

Allows to set the target directory for the bin files of globally installed packages.

state-dir

Default:
- If the $XDG_STATE_HOME env variable is set, then $XDG_STATE_HOME/pnpm
- On Windows: ~/AppData/Local/pnpm-state
- On macOS: ~/.pnpm-state
- On Linux: ~/.local/state/pnpm
Type: path

The directory where pnpm creates the pnpm-state.json file that is currently used only by the update checker.

cache-dir

Default:
- If the $XDG_CACHE_HOME env variable is set, then $XDG_CACHE_HOME/pnpm
- On Windows: ~/AppData/Local/pnpm-cache
- On macOS: ~/Library/Caches/pnpm
- On Linux: ~/.cache/pnpm
Type: path

The location of the package metadata cache.

use-stderr

Default: false
Type: Boolean

When true, all the output is written to stderr.

update-notifier

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Set to false to suppress the update notification when using an older version of pnpm than the latest.

prefer-symlinked-executables

Added in: v7.6.0

Default: true, when node-linker is set to hoisted and the system is POSIX
Type: Boolean

Create symlinks to executables in node_modules/.bin instead of command shims. This setting is ignored on Windows, where only command shims work.

verify-store-integrity

Added in: v7.7.0

Default: true
Type: Boolean

By default, if a file in the store has been modified, the content of this file is checked before linking it to a project’s node_modules. If verify-store-integrity is set to false, files in the content-addressable store will not be checked during installation.

ignore-compatibility-db

Added in: v7.9.0

Default: false
Type: Boolean

During installation the dependencies of some packages are automatically patched. If you want to disable this, set this config to false.

The patches are applied from Yarn’s @yarnpkg/extensions package.

resolution-mode

Added in: v7.10.0

Default: highest
Type: highest, time-based, lowest-direct (added in: v7.27.0)

When resolution-mode is set to time-based, dependencies will be resolved the following way:

Direct dependencies will be resolved to their lowest versions. So if there is foo@^1.1.0 in the dependencies, then 1.1.0 will be installed.
Subdependencies will be resolved from versions that were published before the last direct dependency was published.

With this resolution mode installations with warm cache are faster. It also reduces the chance of subdependency hijacking as subdependencies will be updated only if direct dependencies are updated.

This resolution mode works only with npm’s full metadata. So it is slower in some scenarios. However, if you use Verdaccio v5.15.1 or newer, you may set the registry-supports-time-field setting to true, and it will be really fast.

When resolution-mode is set to lowest-direct, direct dependencies will be resolved to their lowest versions.

registry-supports-time-field

Added in: v7.10.0

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Set this to true if the registry that you are using returns the “time” field in the abbreviated metadata. As of now, only Verdaccio from v5.15.1 supports this.

extend-node-path

Added in: v7.25.0

Default: true
Type: Boolean

When false, the NODE_PATH environment variable is not set in the command shims.