.npmrc · pnpm

pnpm gets its config settings from the command line, environment variables, and .npmrc files.

The pnpm config command can be used to update and edit the contents of the user and global .npmrc files.

The four relevant files are:

per-project config file (/path/to/my/project/.npmrc)
per-workspace config file (the directory that contains the pnpm-workspace.yaml file)
per-user config file (~/.npmrc)
global config file ($PREFIX/etc/npmrc)

All .npmrc files are an ini-formatted list of key = value parameters.

Settings

always-auth

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Force pnpm to always require authentication when accessing the registry, even for GET requests.

ca

Default: The npm CA certificate
Type: String, Array or null

The Certificate Authority signing certificate that is trusted for SSL connections to the registry. Values should be in PEM format (Windows calls it "Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER)") with newlines replaced by the string "\n". For example:

ca="-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\nXXXX\nXXXX\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----"

Set to null to only allow "known" registrars, or to a specific CA cert to trust only that specific signing authority.

Multiple CAs can be trusted by specifying an array of certificates:

ca[]="..."
ca[]="..."

cafile

Default: null
Type: path

A path to a file containing one or multiple Certificate Authority signing certificates. Similar to the ca setting, but allows for multiple CA’s, as well as for the CA information to be stored in a file on disk.

cert

Default: null
Type: String

A client certificate to pass when accessing the registry. Values should be in PEM format (Windows calls it "Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER)") with newlines replaced by the string "\n". For example:

cert="-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\nXXXX\nXXXX\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----"

It is not the path to a certificate file (and there is no "certfile" option).

color

Added in: v4.1.0

Default: auto
Type: auto, always, never

Controls colors in the output.

auto - output uses colors when the stdout is a TTY (i.e. when the output goes straight to a terminal).
always - ignore the difference between terminals and pipes. You’ll rarely want this; in most scenarios, if you want color codes in your redirected output, you can instead pass a --color flag to the pnpm command to force it to use color codes. The default setting is almost always what you’ll want.
never - turns off colors. You can also turn off colors via the --no-color flag.

store-dir

Added in: v4.2.0 (renamed from store)

Default: ~/.pnpm-store
Type: path

The location where all the packages are saved on the disk.

The store should be always on the same disk on which installation is happening. So there will be one store per disk. If there is a home directory on the current disk, then the store is created in <home dir>/.pnpm-store. If there is no homedir on the disk, then the store is created in the root. For example, if installation is happening on disk D then the store will be created in D:\.pnpm-store.

It is possible to set a store from a different disk but in that case pnpm will copy, not link, packages from the store. Hard links are possible only inside a filesystem.

modules-dir

Added in: v4.14.0

Default: node_modules
Type: path

The directory in which dependencies will be installed (instead of node_modules).

network-concurrency

Default: 16
Type: Number

Controls the maximum number of HTTP requests that can be done simultaneously.

child-concurrency

Default: 5
Type: Number

Controls the number of child processes run parallelly to build node modules.

loglevel

Added in: v4.13.0

Default: info
Type: debug, info, warn, error

What level of logs to report. Any logs at or higher than the given level will be shown. Or use --silent to turn off all logging.

verify-store-integrity

Added in: v1.8.0

Default: true
Type: Boolean

If false, doesn't check whether packages in the store were mutated.

virtual-store-dir

Added in: v4.1.0

Default: node_modules/.pnpm
Types: path

The directory with links to the store. All direct and indirect dependencies of the project are linked into this directory.

This is a useful setting that can solve issues with long paths on Windows. If you have some dependencies with very long paths, you can select a virtual store in the root of your drive (for instance C:\my-project-store).

Or you can set the virtual store to .pnpm and add it to .gitignore. This will make the stacktraces nicer as paths to dependencies will have one directory less.

NOTE: the virtual store cannot be shared between several projects. Every project should have its own virtual store.

package-import-method

Added in: v1.25.0

Default: auto
Type: auto, hardlink, copy, clone

Controls the way packages are imported from the store.

auto - try to clone packages from the store. If cloning is not supported then hardlink packages from the store. If neither cloning nor linking is possible, falls back to copying
hardlink - hardlink packages from the store
copy - copy packages from the store
clone - clone (aka copy-on-write or reflink) packages from the store

publish-branch

Added in: v4.11.0

Default: master
Types: String

The main branch of the repository which is used for publishing the latest changes.

lockfile

Added in: v1.32.0 (initially named shrinkwrap)

Default: true
Type: Boolean

When set to false, pnpm won't read or generate a pnpm-lock.yaml file.

prefer-frozen-lockfile

Added in: v1.37.1 (initially named prefer-frozen-shrinkwrap)

Default: true (from v1.38.0)
Type: Boolean

When true and the available pnpm-lock.yaml satisfies the package.json then a headless installation is performed. A headless installation is faster than a regular one because it skips dependencies resolution and peers resolution.

use-running-store-server

Added in: v2.5.0

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Only allows installation with a store server. If no store server is running, installation will fail.

side-effects-cache

Added in: v1.31.0

Stability: Experimental

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Use and cache the results of (pre/post)install hooks.

side-effects-cache-readonly

Added in: v1.31.0

Stability: Experimental

Default: false
Type: Boolean

Only use the side effects cache if present, do not create it for new packages.

hoist

Added in: v4.0.0

Default: true
Type: boolean

When true, all dependencies are hoisted to node_modules/.pnpm. This makes unlisted dependencies accessible to all packages inside node_modules.

hoist-pattern

Added in: v4.0.0

Default: ['*']
Type: string[]

Tells pnpm, which packages should be hoisted to node_modules/.pnpm. By default, all packages are hoisted. However, if you know that only some buggy packages are requiring unlisted dependencies, you may hoist just them.

For instance:

hoist-pattern[]=*eslint*
hoist-pattern[]=*babel*

public-hoist-pattern

Added in: v5.2.0

Default: ['@types/*']
Type: string[]

Unlike hoist-pattern, which hoists dependencies to a hidden modules directory inside the virtual store, public-hoist-pattern hoists dependencies matching the pattern to the root modules directory. Hoisting to the root modules directory means that application code will have access to phantom dependencies (dependencies that are not direct dependencies of the project).

This setting is useful when dealing with some buggy pluggable tools that don't resolve dependencies properly.

For instance:

public-hoist-pattern[]=*plugin*

Note: Setting shamefully-hoist to true is the same as setting public-hoist-pattern to *.

shamefully-hoist

Added in: v1.34.0 (Renamed from shamefully-flatten in v4.0.0)

Default: false
Type: Boolean

By default, pnpm creates a semistrict node_modules. It means that your dependencies have access to undeclared dependencies but your code does not. With this layout, most of the packages in the ecosystem work with no issues. However, if some tooling only works when the hoisted dependencies are in the root of node_modules, you can set this config to true.

strict-peer-dependencies

Added in: v2.15.0

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If true, commands fail on missing or invalid peer dependencies.

use-beta-cli

Added in: v3.6.0

Default: false
Type: Boolean

When true, beta features of the CLI are used. This means that you may get some changes to the CLI functionality that are breaking changes.

engine-strict

Default: false
Type: Boolean

If set to true, then pnpm will stubbornly refuse to install (or even consider installing) any package that claims to not be compatible with the current Node.js version.

Regardless of this config, installation will always fail when a project (not a dependency) will specify an incompatible pnpm version in its engines field.

fetch-retries

Default: 2
Type: Number

The "retries" config for the retry module to use when fetching packages from the registry.

fetch-retry-factor

Default: 10
Type: Number

The "factor" config for the retry module to use when fetching packages.

fetch-retry-mintimeout

Default: 10000 (10 seconds)
Type: Number

The "minTimeout" config for the retry module to use when fetching packages.

fetch-retry-maxtimeout

Default: 60000 (1 minute)
Type: Number

The "maxTimeout" config for the retry module to use when fetching packages.

https-proxy

Default: null
Type: url

A proxy to use for outgoing https requests. If the HTTPS_PROXY or https_proxy or HTTP_PROXY or http_proxy environment variables are set, proxy settings will be honored by the underlying request library.

key

Default: null
Type: String

A client key to pass when accessing the registry. Values should be in PEM format with newlines replaced by the string "\n". For example:

key="-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nXXXX\nXXXX\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----"

It is not the path to a key file (and there is no "keyfile" option).

local-address

Default: undefined
Type: IP Address

The IP address of the local interface to use when making connections to the npm registry. Must be IPv4 in versions of Node prior to 0.12.

proxy

Default: null
Type: url

A proxy to use for outgoing http requests. If the HTTP_PROXY or http_proxy environment variables are set, proxy settings will be honored by the underlying request library.

recursive-install

Added in: v5.4.0

Default: false
Type: Boolean

When false, pnpm install will only install dependencies for the current project. pnpm install -r will have to be used in order to install all dependencies of all projects in a monorepo.

registry

Default: https://registry.npmjs.org/
Type: url

The base URL of the npm package registry.

save-prefix

Default: '^'
Type: String

Configure how versions of packages installed to a package.json file get prefixed.

For example, if a package has version 1.2.3, by default its version is set to ^1.2.3 which allows minor upgrades for that package, but after pnpm config set save-prefix='~' it would be set to ~1.2.3 which only allows patch upgrades.

This config is ignored when the added package has a range specified. For instance, pnpm add foo@2 will add 2 to package.json, regardless of the value of save-prefix.

strict-ssl

Default: true
Type: Boolean

Whether or not to do SSL key validation when making requests to the registry via https.

unsafe-perm

Default: false if running as root, true otherwise
Type: Boolean

Set to true to suppress the UID/GID switching when running package scripts. If set explicitly to false, then installing as a non-root user will fail.

git-checks