What is the store in pnpm?

The store in pnpm is the centralized storage (cache) where pnpm keeps the single copies of every downloaded package. This store lives outside node_modules and is used by every project on the machine.

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#What the store does

1. Stores downloaded dependency versions

• one version of a package lives in the store only once, even if it is used in a hundred projects.

2. Is used as the source for node_modules

• during install, pnpm does not copy packages into the project, it creates hard links to the files in the store.

3. Speeds up repeat installs

• if a package is already in the store, pnpm does not download it again.

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#Where it is stored

Usually in a directory like:

The exact location can be found with:

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#Why this matters

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#Summary

The store in pnpm is a global package cache from which pnpm distributes dependencies to every project, using hard links instead of copying. This is the foundation of pnpm's performance and space savings.