An alias for node package managers

Yarn 1 is never getting updated again. Yarn Berry (versions 2-4) are too different. yarn is dead. But you might have dozens of projects using yarn still and while you onboarded to pnpm, your muscle memory betrays you in every repo at least once a day.

Once a long time ago, I am sure I saw a script just like this on Twitter, but I didn’t copy it back then or save a note for it. Later I re-created it.

#!/bin/bash

# Do you have timeless muscle memory of using yarn?
# Consider this script with an alias of `yarn` or more generic `y` or `p`
# 
# Then, detect lock file and run the package manager based on the lockfile

# Function to run npm, yarn, or pnpm based on the lock file present
run_package_manager() {
  if [ -e "pnpm-lock.yaml" ]; then
    pnpm "$@"
  elif [ -e "yarn.lock" ]; then
    yarn "$@"
  elif [ -e "package-lock.json" ]; then
    npm "$@"
  else
    pnpm "$@"
  fi
}

# Call the function with all passed arguments
run_package_manager "$@"

The small script that determines which package manage among npm, yarn, and pnpm, to run based on the lockfile. Or it defaults to pnpm. You could customize that behavior if you want to. At one time I thought I’d alias this to yarn but it was a bit too wild for me. Instead I ended up using p—perhaps for package manager.