When working with JavaScript or TypeScript projects, two key choices often come up:

1. Which package manager to use? (npm, Yarn, pnpm, Bun)

2. How to manage multiple packages in one repo? (Turborepo, Nx)

Both decisions can affect speed, developer experience, and project scalability.

1️⃣ What is a Package Manager?

A package manager helps you pull already available code from a central repository into your projects — promoting the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle.

Default: Node.js ships with npm.

Popular Package Managers

NPM (Node Package Manager)

• ✅ Default — ships with Node.js

• ✅ Huge ecosystem & strong community support

• ❌ Slower installs

• ❌ node_modules can become bloated

Yarn (by Meta)

• Versions: Yarn 1 (Classic), Yarn Berry (v2+)

• 🚀 Faster installs (parallel execution)

• 🏗 Workspaces for monorepos

• 🔗 Dependency linking instead of deep node_modules

💡 Monorepo = Multiple projects or components in a single repository (e.g., frontend + backend in one place)

📺 Watch: Monorepo Basics

pnpm (Performant npm)

• ⚡ Fast & disk space efficient

• 📂 Uses a content-addressable store

• 🔗 Symlinks to global store instead of deep copies

• 🛠 Strict dependency resolution

• ❗ Deployment complexity (flat structure may break some dependencies)

• 🏗 Supports workspaces for monorepos

Bun

• 🆕 Node.js replacement (includes runtime, npm client, bundler)

• ⚡ Fastest among package managers

• 📦 Comes with basic package support

• ❗ New and less mature

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2️⃣ Monorepos in Practice

A monorepo centralizes multiple projects/apps into one repository to:

• Avoid redundancy

• Share utilities/libraries across projects

• Manage everything with unified tooling

Monorepo Tooling

Turborepo (by Vercel)

• 🎯 Focused on frontend projects

• ⚡ Caching for faster builds

• 🛠 Parallel task execution

• 🚀 Great for React, Next.js, etc.

Nx

• 🔥 Works for both frontend & backend

• 🔍 Dependency tracking between packages/apps

• ⚙ Generators for scaffolding code (no manual file setup)

• 🛠 Serve, build, test from one place

🔌 Supports advanced tools like Redis, Kafka, gRPC (for microservices)

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In Summary

1. Package Managers

Package managers are responsible for installing, updating, and managing project dependencies. While all serve the same purpose, they differ in performance, caching, workspaces support, and ecosystem maturity.

2. Monorepo Tools

Monorepos allow multiple related packages or apps to be stored in a single repository, improving code sharing and consistency. Build tools like Turborepo and Nx streamline this by handling caching, dependency graphs, and parallel tasks.

Key takeaway:

• If you want maximum compatibility and an easy start, stick with npm or Yarn.

• If you want efficiency for monorepos, pnpm is an excellent choice.

• For extreme performance and experimentation, Bun is emerging.

• For monorepos, Turborepo is quick to adopt, while Nx offers more advanced and polyglot support.

Thanks to Hitesh Choudhary for taking the time to spark curiosity.