JavaScript installer pnpm recast in Rust because ECMAScript can't keep up
Fully backward-compatible upgrade promises zero-friction speedup for monorepo wranglers.
The widely-used JavaScript package manager pnpm has significantly reduced installation times, up to 90%, through a complete rewrite in Rust. This new version 12 should not cause confusion during upgrades, as most features remain the same, and documentation covers both versions. In tests, pnpm 12 installed a sample package in just 5.19 seconds, compared to 8.22 seconds for pnpm 11 and 47.7 seconds for npm.
The project team also created a Rust-based registry server, pnpr, which further boosts performance. With a new Rust core binary accounting for 65.9% of the application, the overhead of routing filesystem work through Node.js is greatly reduced. Package installation is primarily dominated by fetching metadata and tarballs, unpacking files, resolving dependency graphs, and linking packages.
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