Installation
Prerequisites
If you don't use the standalone script or @pnpm/exe
to install pnpm, then you need to have Node.js (at least v16.14) to be installed on your system.
Using a standalone script
You may install pnpm even if you don't have Node.js installed, using the following scripts.
On Windows
Using PowerShell:
iwr https://get.pnpm.io/install.ps1 -useb | iex
On POSIX systems
curl -fsSL https://get.pnpm.io/install.sh | sh -
If you don't have curl installed, you would like to use wget:
wget -qO- https://get.pnpm.io/install.sh | sh -
On Alpine Linux
# bash
wget -qO- https://get.pnpm.io/install.sh | ENV="$HOME/.bashrc" SHELL="$(which bash)" bash -
# sh
wget -qO- https://get.pnpm.io/install.sh | ENV="$HOME/.shrc" SHELL="$(which sh)" sh -
# dash
wget -qO- https://get.pnpm.io/install.sh | ENV="$HOME/.dashrc" SHELL="$(which dash)" dash -
Installing a specific version
Prior to running the install script, you may optionally set an env variable PNPM_VERSION
to install a specific version of pnpm:
curl -fsSL https://get.pnpm.io/install.sh | env PNPM_VERSION=<version> sh -
You may use the pnpm env command then to install Node.js.
Using Corepack
Since v16.13, Node.js is shipping Corepack for managing package managers. This is an experimental feature, so you need to enable it by running:
corepack enable
If you installed Node.js using Homebrew, you'll need to install corepack separately:
brew install corepack
This will automatically install pnpm on your system. However, it probably won't be the latest version of pnpm. To upgrade it, check what is the latest pnpm version and run:
corepack prepare pnpm@<version> --activate
With Node.js v16.17 or newer, you may install the latest
version of pnpm by just specifying the tag:
corepack prepare pnpm@latest --activate
Using npm
We provide two packages of pnpm CLI, pnpm
and @pnpm/exe
.
pnpm
is a ordinary version of pnpm, which needs Node.js to run.@pnpm/exe
is packaged with Node.js into an executable, so it may be used on a system with no Node.js installed.
npm install -g pnpm
or
npm install -g @pnpm/exe
Using Homebrew
If you have the package manager installed, you can install pnpm using the following command:
brew install pnpm
Using winget
If you have winget installed, you can install pnpm using the following command:
winget install pnpm
Using Scoop
If you have Scoop installed, you can install pnpm using the following command:
scoop install nodejs-lts pnpm
Using Choco
If you have Chocolatey installed, you can install pnpm using the following command:
choco install pnpm
Using Volta
If you have Volta installed, you can install pnpm using the following command:
volta install pnpm
Do you wanna use pnpm on CI servers? See: Continuous Integration.
Compatibility
Here is a list of past pnpm versions with respective Node.js version support.
Node.js | pnpm 5 | pnpm 6 | pnpm 7 | pnpm 8 |
---|---|---|---|---|
Node.js 12 | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
Node.js 14 | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
Node.js 16 | ?️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Node.js 18 | ?️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Node.js 20 | ?️ | ? | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Troubleshooting
If pnpm is broken and you cannot fix it by reinstalling, you might need to remove it manually from the PATH.
Let's assume you have the following error when running pnpm install
:
C:\src>pnpm install
internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:883
throw err;
^
Error: Cannot find module 'C:\Users\Bence\AppData\Roaming\npm\pnpm-global\4\node_modules\pnpm\bin\pnpm.js'
←[90m at Function.Module._resolveFilename (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:880:15)←[39m
←[90m at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:725:27)←[39m
←[90m at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (internal/modules/run_main.js:72:12)←[39m
←[90m at internal/main/run_main_module.js:17:47←[39m {
code: ←[32m'MODULE_NOT_FOUND'←[39m,
requireStack: []
}
First, try to find the location of pnpm by running: which pnpm
. If you're on Windows, run this command in Git Bash.
You'll get the location of the pnpm command, for instance:
$ which pnpm
/c/Program Files/nodejs/pnpm
Now that you know where the pnpm CLI is, open that directory and remove any pnpm-related files (pnpm.cmd
, pnpx.cmd
, pnpm
, etc).
Once done, install pnpm again and it should work as expected.
Using a shorter alias
pnpm
might be hard to type, so you may use a shorter alias like pn
instead.
Adding a permanent alias on POSIX systems
Just put the following line to your .bashrc
, .zshrc
, or config.fish
:
alias pn=pnpm
Adding a permanent alias in Powershell (Windows):
In a Powershell window with admin rights, execute:
notepad $profile.AllUsersAllHosts
In the profile.ps1
file that opens, put:
set-alias -name pn -value pnpm
Save the file and close the window. You may need to close any open Powershell window in order for the alias to take effect.
Uninstalling pnpm
If you need to remove the pnpm CLI from your system and any files it has written to your disk, see Uninstalling pnpm.