Confused about the general concept of PNPM

[MrAmericanMike]

So I though that the idea of PNPM is that it creates symlinks instead of installing packages for every project in the node_modules folders.

So today I was doing some cleanup on some of my projects. As a rough idea lets say my folder with different code bases in it was about 20Gb. After going directory by directory (Project by project) deleting all the node_modules folders when I check again the size of the main projects folder it was down to about 5Gb.

How is this possible? I though I was just deleting symlinks.

Am I missing something?

[xty]

So I though that the idea of PNPM is that it creates symlinks instead of installing packages for every project in the node_modules folders.

While pnpm is known for creating hard links (not symlinks) from the global store, this might not always be the case. A number of factors could come into play:

• Settings in your per-project, per-user, and global npmrc files. In particular, pay special attention to the package-import-method parameter.
• Whether your project directories reside on the same drive/partition as the global store. See: Does pnpm work across multiple drives or filesystems?

A further possibility is that the node_modules directories are NOT actually consuming the 15GB of disk space you think it is. See: Why does my node_modules folder use disk space if packages are stored in a global store? In short, the space that appears to have been saved is likely not claimed exclusively by files in node_modules but rather shared with the global store.

How is this possible? I though I was just deleting symlinks.

In any event, you're definitely not just deleting symlinks.