[specialist]

This is a compelling reason to switch:

From https://pnpm.js.org

"Efficient: One version of a package is saved only ever once on a disk. So you save dozens of gigabytes of disk space!"

Without digging, I imagine this will be more like Maven's cache.

NPM's design decision to flatten the version hierarchy baffled me. And has occasionally tripped me up.

[Rockslide]

For everyone running a Docker setup, this is not an option... Docker doesn't support symlinking files outside the build context.

[colemickens]

This is soon to be solvable by mounting the cache directory during the build, thankfully: https://github.com/moby/buildkit/pull/442 ("dockerfile: add run --mount support #442 ")

[striking]

Docker also has a cache, making dependency installs not usually an issue.

[Rockslide]

Which works on a totally different level and doesn't help at all in terms of sharing dependency snapshots between different projects.

[striking]

That is not something I'd want to do. Docker's solution is good enough for almost every build that happens. I can eat the time cost not covered by that solution and not have to worry about bugs stemming from improper copying of dep snapshots.