Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Bower VS pnpm

Compare Bower VS pnpm and see what are their differences

Bower logo Bower

Bower is a package manager for the web.

pnpm logo pnpm

Fast, disk space efficient npm installs
  • Bower Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-03
  • pnpm Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-03-23

Bower features and specs

  • Dependency Management
    Bower provides an easy way to manage front-end dependencies, allowing developers to quickly add, update, and remove libraries.
  • Flat Dependency Tree
    Bower maintains a flat dependency tree, which means there are no nested dependencies, reducing the chances of version conflicts.
  • Language Agnostic
    Bower can manage any static content used in a web application, regardless of whether it's JavaScript, CSS, HTML, or images.
  • Human-Readable Configuration
    The configuration file (bower.json) is easy to read and edit, making it user-friendly for developers.
  • Wide Adoption
    Despite newer tools emerging, Bower is still widely used in the industry and has a large repository of packages.

Possible disadvantages of Bower

  • Deprecated
    Bower is officially deprecated, and the maintainers recommend using Yarn and Webpack for the new projects.
  • Limited Scope
    Bower is primarily focused on front-end packages, whereas other tools like npm and Yarn can handle both front-end and back-end packages.
  • No Native Support for Version Locking
    Bower does not natively support version locking (like package-lock.json in npm), which can lead to inconsistencies across environments.
  • Redundant with npm
    Bower's functionality overlaps significantly with npm, which has become the standard for both front-end and back-end package management.
  • Maintenance Overhead
    Using Bower alongside npm can add unnecessary maintenance overhead to projects, as developers need to manage dependencies in two separate tools.

pnpm features and specs

  • Efficient Disk Space Usage
    pnpm uses a unique symlink-based approach to store only a single copy of each package version, reducing disk space usage significantly.
  • Fast Installations
    Due to its disk-efficient storage, pnpm can perform installations much faster compared to npm and yarn, especially in projects with large node_modules.
  • Strict Dependency Resolution
    pnpm enforces stricter rules for dependency management, ensuring that different projects don't accidentally share dependencies, reducing the risk of dependency conflicts.
  • Isolation of Dependencies
    Each project gets a strict isolation of dependencies, as pnpm creates a node_modules structure with symbolic links, avoiding pollution from conflicting package versions.
  • Compatibility with npm
    pnpm is fully compatible with the npm registry and supports all common npm commands, making it easy to transition between npm and pnpm.

Possible disadvantages of pnpm

  • Learning Curve
    Developers familiar with npm might find some aspects of pnpm unfamiliar, requiring a learning curve to understand its structure and symlink-based storage.
  • Tooling Ecosystem
    Some tools and scripts that assume npm's or yarn's node_modules layout might not work out of the box with pnpm, requiring additional configuration or workarounds.
  • Less Mature Community
    Despite its growing popularity, pnpm has a smaller community compared to npm and yarn, which might lead to fewer third-party resources or community support.
  • Complexity of Symbolic Links
    The use of symbolic links can introduce complexity in some environments or during debugging, especially if the environment does not handle symlinks well.

Analysis of Bower

Overall verdict

  • Bower is now considered outdated and largely deprecated in favor of more modern alternatives. While it served its purpose in the past, the web development community has largely moved on to other tools that offer better integration with current build systems and frameworks.

Why this product is good

  • Bower was a popular package manager for web projects, designed to handle front-end libraries and dependencies. It simplified the management of project dependencies, resolved versioning conflicts, and allowed for efficient front-end development. However, as the web development landscape has evolved, tools like npm and Yarn have become more standard due to their broader functionalities, community support, and seamless integration with modern module systems.

Recommended for

    Bower may still be of some use to maintain legacy projects that originally relied on it. However, for any new projects or updates, it's recommended to use npm, Yarn, or other modern package managers and build tools.

Bower videos

Walmart $30 Ring Light ! | Bower 8 Inch Ring Light Review!

More videos:

  • Review - BOWER Multi Pod Unboxing and Review - Best Tripod for Beginners?
  • Review - $29 BOWER 8” RING LIGHT WALMART UNBOXING, SET-UP & REVIEW

pnpm videos

Why I stopped using NPM for PNPM And You should too! | #CodingPhase

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Bower and pnpm)
JS Build Tools
82 82%
18% 18
Front End Package Manager
Package Manager
0 0%
100% 100
Web Application Bundler
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Bower should be more popular than pnpm. It has been mentiond 7 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Bower mentions (7)

  • SuperUtilsPlus: A Modern Alternative to Lodash
    I do sort of miss bower [0] for this reason. It was really just a way to download javascript and plunk it into your application. It was standard practice to check all of your vendor dependencies into SCM. [1] Of course a good chunk of it was transformed through something like Gulp or Grunt before being added to the bower repository so you were unlikely to maintain those once checked in, but there was still quite a... - Source: Hacker News / 7 days ago
  • 100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
    Bower: A web package manager for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, fonts, and even images. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • 5 NPM Alternatives You Should Try
    Bower is a package manager specifically designed for front-end web development. It can be used to manage JavaScript, CSS, and HTML packages and dependencies. It was developed by Twitter and is known for its simplicity and ease of use. However, it is worth noting that Bower is no longer actively maintained, and developers are encouraged to use other package managers like Yarn or PNPM instead. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • zachrytylerwood/vscode
    Bower dependency directory (https://bower.io/). Source: over 2 years ago
  • The Emperor's New Library
    What we see, a decade ago, are that many of the "popular" libraries, frameworks, and methods, not surprisingly, have gone by the wayside, a lot that have remained in current code as difficult-to-removemodernize legacy cruft (Bower, Gulp, Grunt, Backbone, Angular 1, ...), and then we have the small minority that are still here. Some that remain have had their utility lessened/questioned by platform and language... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

pnpm mentions (3)

  • Don't trust anyone, not even update
    Imagine npm but faster and it uses symlinks n stuff to reduce disk use and make node_modules not a huge nightmare Https://pnpm.js.org. Source: almost 4 years ago
  • Next.js TypeScript Template
    Pnpm is a cool alternative to yarn or npm as it is faster and can reuse downloaded packages to reduce the size of node_modules. - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago
  • [Talk] Sharing Typescript Types between your Frontend and Backend
    Lerna is great, as is pnpm (https://pnpm.js.org/) which we use at work. PNPM is a little faster, as it's sharing all the reused dependencies from a central location with symlinks, so it makes installing faster. Source: about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Bower and pnpm, you can also consider the following products

npm - npm is a package manager for Node.

Webpack - Webpack is a module bundler. Its main purpose is to bundle JavaScript files for usage in a browser, yet it is also capable of transforming, bundling, or packaging just about any resource or asset.

Yarn - Yarn is a package manager for your code.

JSHint - New JSHint website. Anton Kovalyov Oct 1st, 2013. For the last couple of weeks I've been working on a new homepage for JSHint and today I'm proud to announce the new jshint. com! JSHint Website.

Homebrew - The missing package manager for macOS

Ender - Frontend Development