uninstall pnpm?

[tomByrer]

Hard to Google 'uninstall pnpm' when pnpm uninstall is a command ;)

I curl -L https://unpkg.com/@pnpm/self-installer | node, & am unsure how to undo that & remove the cache.

[zkochan]

We can add such command to @pnpm/self-installer but as of now you can uninstall pnpm only manually

Here's the destination where it is unpacked:

https://github.com/pnpm/self-installer/blob/93903e8bfa0e5b2cad5ab90ab517d0400285288e/src/install.js#L7

[deadcoder0904]

Yes I need it too.

How do we uninstall pnpm while removing all the packages in the global store?

Will npm r -g pnpm && rm -rf ~/.pnpm-store remove all packages?

Edit:

I tried npm r -g pnpm && rm -rf ~/.pnpm-store & installed pnpm & ran it through my project but it reused all the modules which means it had packages in my project drive & not home ~/.

So how do we clear entire store? Maybe a command like pnpm cache clean can remove everything from the global store.

Edit 2:

As Zoltan earlier told me few months back in some issue that pnpm installs store in the root of every drive. Its a feature released in some version of pnpm.

So in my case, it got installed in another drive than my root drive & it was 1.5GB & to clear it I had to do rm -rf /Volumes/<drive-name>/.pnpm-store for MacOS.

Anyways an option like this would be nice like pnpm cache clean clears all pnpm packages if you want to start fresh.

Also, after uninstalling pnpm it should remove all the packages from ~/.pnpm-store.

[smplyjr]

I'm having the issue right now, any fixes?

Operating System: Win 7 (64-bit)
PNPM Version: 4.1.8

Steps that I made so far to uninstall:

• Open command prompt and run npm uninstall pnpm -g
• Open command prompt as an admin and run npm uninstall pnpm -g

Actual result: when running pnpm from command prompt, it still returns the configuration of pnpm.

Expected result: when running pnpm from command prompt, it should return pnpm is not recognized as an internal etc... (YOU GET THE IDEA SINCE IT IS COMPLETELY UNINSTALLED/REMOVED)

Note: I run npm list -g -depth 0 as well and pnpm is not listed there but by running pnpm from the command prompt, it still shows the configuration files.

[Countrygrl00]

I'm having the issue right now, any fixes?

Operating System: Win 7 (64-bit)
PNPM Version: 4.1.8

Steps that I made so far to uninstall:

• Open command prompt and run npm uninstall pnpm -g
• Open command prompt as an admin and run npm uninstall pnpm -g

Actual result: when running pnpm from command prompt, it still returns the configuration of pnpm.

Expected result: when running pnpm from command prompt, it should return pnpm is not recognized as an internal etc... (YOU GET THE IDEA SINCE IT IS COMPLETELY UNINSTALLED/REMOVED)

Note: I run npm list -g -depth 0 as well and pnpm is not listed there but by running pnpm from the command prompt, it still shows the configuration files.

[beganovich]

Had an issue today, was terrible experience looking for the solution, when uninstall do something totally different.

However, this is my approach (note: this only applies to Linux, haven't tested on Mac/Windows & pnpm was installed using npm):

1. See if the pnpm is listed on global list of modules: npm list -g -depth 0
2. Even though, I installed it with npm it wasn't there, so let's add it again: sudo npm add -g pnpm --force

Note: --force is provided because pnpm binary was already there.

3. Remove the store, for me it was in: sudo rm -rf ~/.pnpm-store
4. Remove the module itself: sudo npm uninstall -g pnpm

Note:
I am using sudo because I don't use nvm. If you are nvm user you probably won't need it.

[luxlogica]

@zkochan Feature request: could we have a pnpm self-uninstall command - or something similar?

After all, pnpm knows where al of its files and stores are, and is in the best position to uninstall itself. I think it would also help those who are new or hesitant to try it out - it's reassuring when you know that you can always try things out and then clean it all off your system with one command, if you don't like it.

[retorquere]

I have followed the various instructions above, and I'm getting

Error: Cannot find module '/Users/emile/.npm-packages/pnpm-global/4/node_modules/mocha/bin/mocha'

when I'm trying to run a globally-installed mocha. I've removed all of node and reinstalled it, and I can't find any environment variable or dot-file that still points to pnpm.

[zkochan]

Try to run npx pnpm rm -g mocha

[Yaojian]

After removing ~/.pnpm-store and reinstall pnpm using npm install -g pnpm, now pnpm gets error when running pnpm install in a project:

 ERROR  ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/home/jyao/.pnpm-store/v3/files/9b/9366257cffcc47db42b9d0203bb592c13c0298-index.json'

any ideas?

[zkochan]

@Yaojian I am not sure how would that happen. Do you use the offline setting?

[Yaojian]

This is the whole story:

1. I use pnpm install on a project and got lots of ERR_PNPM_FETCH_404 with registry.npmjs.org, such as

    Scope: all 3 workspace projects
     WARN  GET https://registry.npmjs.org/@swc/core/download/@swc/core-1.2.50.tgz error (ERR_PNPM_FETCH_404). Will retry in 
    10 seconds. 2 retries left.
     WARN  GET https://registry.npmjs.org/@graphql-codegen/typescript-react-apollo/download/@graphql-codegen/typescript- 
     react-apollo-2.2.3.tgz error (ERR_PNPM_FETCH_404). Will retry in 10 seconds. 2 retries left.
   

  ```
2. I tried to install pnpm from a different npm mirror and still got some ERR_PNPM_FETCH_404
3. I tried to reinstall pnpm with a fresh store, so I deleted `/.pnpm-state.json` and `/.pnpm-store`
4. install pnpm using `npm install -g pnpm`
5. execute `pnpm install` under my project cause the above error

Is there a way to fully uninstall pnpm or reset the store?

[zkochan]

You did fully remove the store. The seems unrelated to removing pnpm. Does it also happen with pnpm v5?

[Yaojian]

Its pnpm 6.0.1

[isc30]

same issue here

[zkochan]

I documented how pnpm may be removed from the system: https://pnpm.io/uninstall

There is not a single command currently. There are some manual steps.

Please create new issues for unrelated things like issues with the global store.

[sayantan300]

Just realised that pnpm also saves node modules in another folder...
I just tried pnpm but I don't think it's good for me because it downloads packages parallely, which eats up more ram than npm i, making my device nearly unusable. Even my terminal and system freezed up at one point.
So I decided to remove pnpm. Did npm un -g pnpm and it deleted pnpm. I also deleted the folder and file told above. But still I saw there was no decrease in my storage... Then I just checked the size of node modules in my repo in which I had tried pnpm i, and it was doubled... Then I just looked inside node modules and found pnpm stored nearly all packages in .pnpm folder. Deleting it cleared half of the node modules and my storage went back before I has installed pnpm.
So why is .pnpm folder there inside node modules if pnpm was meant to be a global package manager?

[zkochan]

it downloads packages parallely, which eats up more ram than npm i

You may reduce the number of parallel network requests using the network-concurrency setting.

So why is .pnpm folder there inside node modules if pnpm was meant to be a global package manager?

The files inside node_modules/.pnpm are hard links to the global content-addressable store.

[sayantan300]

The global folder was in kbs, whereas .pnpm folder inside node modules was 300mb, please explain why is it the opposite?

[zkochan]

You probably looked into the wrong directory, to find that global content-addressable store, run pnpm store path in your project. If you used pnpm only for one project, the size will be roughly equal.

[retorquere]

That's the downside of using hard links. There isn't an "actual location" of the package files, they're all just pointers to the same disk storage, and you need to remove all of them in every place they're used before their storage gets released.

[funlennysub]

I installed pnpm using Node.js is not preinstalled method for pwsh and i want to uninstall pnpm which was installed via this script but none of the commands i tried work(pnpm rm -g pnpm; npm rm -g pnpm etc)

[zkochan]

The uninstall process is not fully automatic.

But it is well described on this page: https://pnpm.io/uninstall

[benediktms]

I'm also having issues removing pnpm when using fnm. Seems I followed all the steps to remove pnpm but it seems like everytime I update my system pnpm (if I run npm update -g) 'magically' reinstalls itself?

[alikleit]

I had to uninstall node then re-install back again. Then install pnpm using npm by running npm rm -g pnpm in powershell.

[swalker326]

Ran into this problem today here are the steps I took:

1. which pnpm -> /opt/homebrew/bin/pnpm. What was super weird here is when I ran brew remove pnpm It acted as if it ran and all was good, but running pnpm -v I was still seeing the version of pnpm.
2. rm /opt/homebrew/bin/pnpm
3. remove symlinks find /opt/homebrew/bin -type l -name 'pnpm' -delete
4. brew update
5. brew doctor

This got to back to no pnpm on my system, I still have not figured out a great way to manage multiple version of pnpm and package I work on wants a very specific version of pnpm.