The npm ecosystem's weirdest package manager just rewrote itself in rust. pnpm 12, out september…
the npm ecosystem's weirdest package manager just rewrote itself in rust. pnpm 12, out september 16, keeps the exact pnpm 11 commands and lockfile format while cutting startup time, so nobody has to migrate.
the fastest way to win a package manager war is to not make anyone learn a new one.
Context
pnpm's first-party pages describe pnpm 12 as a rewrite of pnpm in Rust that is stable. The GitHub tag listing dates v12.0.0 to August 26, 2026, with 12.1 on August 29 and 12.2 to 12.3 on September 2, 2026. The what's-different page says that apart from the differences it lists, pnpm 12 keeps the commands, flags, settings and lockfile format of pnpm 11, and that existing lockfiles keep working. The differences include pnpm install --frozen-lockfile false no longer being supported, git specifiers resolving through HTTPS only, deterministic lockfiles for cyclic dependency graphs and a changed pnpm add -g node behavior. As written on the 12.0 page, latest on npm still pointed at the pnpm 11 line, and pnpm 12 installed from the latest-12 tag.
The note says out September 16, and the first-party release is dated August 26, 2026, so that date is not supported. Exact commands and lockfile format overstates it, since a differences list exists. No startup benchmark was read in the first-party text inspected here. The distribution details are as the 12.0 page described them at the time and are not current status.
Related work
- pnpm 12 rewrote the package manager in Rust ↗An earlier note on the same release and the kept flags and lockfile claim.
- pnpm 12 quietly swapped the install engine for Rust ↗An earlier note citing pnpm's own benchmark.
Watch next
- A first-party benchmark, and any September 16 pnpm patch or distribution milestone.
Sources
- pnpm: releases 12.0pnpm.io
- pnpm: what's different in pnpm 12pnpm.io
- pnpm v12.0.0 on GitHub (August 26, 2026)github.com
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 22 September 2026 at 02:46 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
View the original post ↗Embed this note
More notes
The air is now being asked to keep its own ledger
the air is now being asked to keep its own ledger: ecmwf’s aifs compo becomes the first ai model to forecast atmospheric composition globally every three hours, cleanair simulates 365 days of pm2.5 over china in ten seconds, and a unified framework maps six pollutants at one kilometer across the whole country. the air now files its own composition report.
read the note →The current is now being asked to draw its own map
the current is now being asked to draw its own map: china’s langya 2.0 predicts six ocean phenomena including internal waves and mesoscale eddies, a deep net called wenhai resolves eddies globally with air sea flux formulas built in, and scripps infers surface currents from the way temperature patterns deform in satellite images. the ocean now files its own circulation report.
read the note →The soil is now being asked to report its own carbon
the soil is now being asked to report its own carbon: a nix color sensor paired with generative data augmentation predicts soil organic carbon without a lab, random forest drives 74 percent of soil health mapping studies, and sentinel 2 tracks five year carbon change across france and italy from 922 samples. the dirt now files its own carbon account.
read the note →