Indeed, a package manager is a tool crafted to automate the installation, removal, and updating of software components, with its primary objective being the preservation of consistency among all dependencies.
Additionally, a package manager enables you to utilize and collaborate on code with other developers, streamlining collaborative work.
There are numerous package managers, each tailored to a specific system, language, or framework, such as Pip (Python), Maven (Java), NuGet (.Net), and more.
Yarn, on the other hand, stands out as one of the primary package managers dedicated to the JavaScript environment.
What is Yarn?
Developed by Facebook as an alternative to the npm package manager, Yarn is both a package manager and a project manager. Like npm, Yarn relies on the same package.json principle to define dependencies. It is a fast, secure, and reliable dependency manager for Node.js applications.
Yarn is not only valuable for developers looking to use and share code with others but also serves businesses that can create private packages, making certain reusable modules available only to their teams.
Yarn provides users with a robust set of command-line commands, including installation, management, and publication. Some of the primary commands include:
– `yarn add`: Add dependencies to the project.
– `yarn init`: Create a new package.
– `yarn install`: Install project dependencies.
– `yarn publish`: Publish a package to the npm registry.
– `yarn remove`: Remove project dependencies.
Yarn features & functions
Compatibility
Yarn has the capability to connect to various software platforms. It operates as Software as a Service (SaaS), making it compatible with most enterprise information systems and operating systems. This software, accessible via a web browser, can also be accessed remotely from mobile devices.
Integrations & APIs
Yarn offers APIs for integration with other applications (Java, PHP, database connection, etc.).
Offline cache
The downloaded packages are stored in a single file and cached. This global caching mechanism used by Yarn prevents the need to re-download the same dependencies for each project, thereby speeding up package installation.
Determinism
To detect version conflicts more quickly and resolve dependency problems more efficiently, Yarn uses a versioning algorithm.
Performance
Package installation is much faster than with npm, thanks to download parallelization, caching, etc.
Yarn and Big data
To provide operating system functionality for Big Data analytical applications, Apache Hadoop has integrated YARN as a distributed resource management tool.
Yarn allows you to manage resources by allocating system resources to the different applications running in a Hadoop cluster, and to schedule the execution of tasks on different clusters.
Yarn or npm: Which is better?
- Yarn can install packages from the cache.
- Yarn guarantees package version stability.
- Yarn is optimized for retrieving and installing multiple packages simultaneously.
- It installs packages in parallel, whereas npm installs one package at a time.
- Yarn has a well-managed offline cache, which enables it to do Zero installation.
Conclusion
Yarn is one of the most popular JavaScript package managers. It is valuable for both professionals and businesses to facilitate data exchange between applications, improve workflow, and boost productivity.
It also offers better performance and security compared to npm, thanks to parallelization of operations and the Zero Install feature.
Now that you have a good understanding of Yarn, you may be interested in learning how to use it. To do so, consider choosing DataScientest. Schedule an appointment with an advisor to guide you towards the right training program.
