pnpm 12: Linux installs 64 to 90 percent faster in tests

An installation command that slows down project setup now runs significantly faster with pnpm 12. The package manager project has completely rewritten its software in Rust; Vercel's Turborepo project measured 64 to 90 percent less installation time on Linux than with pnpm 10.28.

Corepack, the Node.js script for managing package managers, also gained speed with a populated cache: In the tests, it started 74 percent faster. With an empty cache, however, Corepack was 11 percent slower. The testers point out that other operating systems may produce different results because they use different methods for creating file links.

One specific lever is packageImportMethod: auto. On Linux, pnpm 12 now prefers hard links, meaning references to already existing files. On the btrfs file system, this halves installation time according to the measurements; on ext4, there is no benefit.

For everyday use, the version also provides more flexibility for mixed projects. pnpm 12 can handle packages in npm, Yarn Classic, Yarn Berry, Yarn 6 and Bun formats and use the appropriate package manager for each. devEngines.runtime also allows local runtimes for Node, Deno or Bun to be specified on a per-project basis.

In concrete terms: Teams with Linux development environments and frequent installations can spend significantly less time waiting for dependencies, especially with btrfs and populated caches. However, the speed increase is not a promise for every environment. Anyone using private repositories should note that GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket can no longer be accessed via SSH, but only over HTTP; faulty settings in pnpm-workspace.yaml are now reported as errors.