How to Install Yarn on Ubuntu 18.04

YARN and NPM (Node Package Manager) are the two popular JavaScript package managers to automate the process of installing, updating and removing NPM packages. In this guide, we will learn how to install YARN on the Ubuntu system. We will also look into some of the commonly used YARN commands.

YARN vs NPM

NPM has few drawbacks like network connectivity issues, slow installation process to mention few and YARN was developed by Facebook to resolve those shortcomings.

YARN is not a replacement for NPM but in fact, it uses the same modules from NPM registry but with the different installation method. Since Yarn doesn’t require you to make any changes to the current workflow, it is possible to install YARN and use it at any point of time during your projects development phase.

Let’s get started with the installation of Yarn in an Ubuntu 18.04 system via the official Yarn APT package repository.

Prerequisites

• You can open a SSH session in your Ubuntu 18.04 system using root or a sudo enabled user.

Add Yarn Repository

The first step of adding a YARN repository is to import the GPG key of the said repository using the following CURL command:

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# curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

Now add the YARN repository in your Ubuntu 18.04 system by issuing the following command:

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# echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list

Installing YARN on Ubuntu

Now that YARN repository has been added to your system, update the APT database and install YARN with the following commands:

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# apt update
# apt install yarn

Remember, the above command will install NodeJS along with YARN. If you have already installed NodeJS using nvm (Node Version Manager) then you can skip installation of Nodejs using the following command:

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# apt install --no-install-recommends yarn

At this point, YARN will be installed in your Ubuntu 18.04 system. Check the version of installed YARN with:

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# yarn --version

Yarn Version

Usages of YARN

1. YARN help

To find the list of available commands and flags along with a brief explanation on what it does, run the following YARN command from the terminal:

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# yarn help

Yarn help

Once you have successfully installed YARN, use it to create your own project, add dependencies to your project and more. Let us explore a few common usages of YARN.

2. Create a New Project

Create a new YARN project by using yarn init followed by the project name.

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# yarn init your_yarn_project

Yarn Init

The above yarn command will prompt you to answer a few questions. You can answer them as per your choice or safely skip them by pressing Enter key. Once done, the yarn init command will create the package.json file containing the answers you have provided earlier. You can also manually edit the information in the package.json file at a later stage.

3. Add dependencies

Sometimes you need to add packages in your yarn project to fulfill the project dependencies. To do that, use the yarn add command followed by package name.

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# yarn add [package_name]

Yarn Add

It is also possible to add specific version of the package with yarn add command by appending package version number or tag:

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# yarn add [package_name]@[tag_or_version]

Yarn Add Package With Specific Version

4. Remove dependencies

If you want to remove an installed package, just use the yarn remove command followed by the package name.

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# yarn remove [package_name]

Yarn Remove Package Dependencies

5. Install all dependencies

To install all dependencies specified in the package.json file, just use yarn or yarn install. This is useful in situation when you have manually added the dependencies in package.json file and subsequently, want to install them.

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# yarn install
      
OR

# yarn

Yarn Install All Packages

Summary

That’s it! You have now installed YARN in your Ubuntu 18.04 system and learned a few commonly used yarn command. To know more about yarn usages, visit the official documentation of yarn.