orogene

Yet another node_modules/ package manager, I guess.

Orogene is a next-generation package manager for tools that use node_modules/, such as bundlers, CLI tools, and Node.js-based applications. It's fast, robust, and meant to be easily integrated into your workflows such that you never have to worry about whether your node_modules/ is up to date.

Note: Orogene is still under heavy development and shouldn't be considered much more than a tech demo or proof of concept. Do not use in production yet.

Benchmarks

Even at this early stage, orogene is very fast. These benchmarks are all on ubuntu linux running under wsl2, with an ext4 filesystem.

All benchmarks are ordered from fastest to slowest (lower is better):

Warm Cache

This test shows performance when running off a warm cache, with an existing lockfile. This scenario is common in CI scenarios with caching enabled, as well as local scenarios where node_modules is wiped out in order to "start over" (and potentially when switching branches).

Of note here is the contrast between the subsecond (!) installation by orogene, versus the much more noticeable install times of literally everything else.

Package Manager	Mean [ms]	Min [ms]	Max [ms]	Relative
orogene	417.3 ± 43.3	374.6	524.8	1.00
bun	1535.2 ± 72.5	1442.3	1628.9	3.68 ± 0.42
pnpm	8285.1 ± 529.0	7680.4	9169.9	19.85 ± 2.42
yarn	20616.7 ± 1726.5	18928.6	24401.5	49.41 ± 6.59
npm	29132.0 ± 4569.2	25113.4	38634.2	69.81 ± 13.13

Cold Cache

This test shows performance when running off a cold cache, but with an existing lockfile. This scenario is common in CI scenarios that don't cache the package manager caches between runs, and for initial installs by teammates on relatively "clean" machines.

Package Manager	Mean [s]	Min [s]	Max [s]	Relative
bun	5.203 ± 1.926	3.555	9.616	1.00
orogene	8.346 ± 0.416	7.938	9.135	1.60 ± 0.60
pnpm	27.653 ± 0.467	26.915	28.294	5.31 ± 1.97
npm	31.613 ± 0.464	30.930	32.192	6.08 ± 2.25
yarn	72.815 ± 1.285	71.275	74.932	13.99 ± 5.19

Caveat Emptor

At the speeds at which orogene operates, these benchmarks can vary widely because they depend on the underlying filesystem's performance. For example, the gaps might be much smaller on Windows or (sometimes) macOS. They may even vary between different filesystems on Linux/FreeBSD. Note that orogene uses different installation strategies based on support for e.g. reflinking (btrfs, APFS, xfs).

Building

Requirements

You will need a Rust toolchain installed. See the official Rust docs for instructions. And git. Next, get a checkout of the source:

git clone https://github.com/orogene/orogene.git
cd orogene

Building

Your first build:

cargo build

The first time you run this, this downloads all the dependencies you will need to build orogene automatically. This step might take a minute or two, but it will only be run once.

Then it compiles all the dependencies as well as the orogene source files.

It should end with something like:

…
Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 1m 22s

When you’ve made changes to the orogene source code, run cargo build again, and it will only compile the changed files quickly:

cargo build
   Compiling orogene v0.1.0 (/Users/jan/Work/rust/orogene)
    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 2.41s

Running

After building successfully, you can run your build with cargo run. In the default configuration, this will run an oro executable built for your local system in ./target/debug. When you run it, it shows you a helpful page of instructions of what you can do with it. Give it a try:

    Finished dev [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 0.14s
     Running `target/debug/oro`
`node_modules/` package manager and utility toolkit.

Usage: oro [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

Commands:
  ping     Ping the registry
  resolve  Resolve a package tree and save the lockfile to the project directory
  restore  Resolves and extracts a node_modules/ tree
  view     Get information about a package
  help     Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
      --root <ROOT>          Package path to operate on
      --registry <REGISTRY>  Registry used for unscoped packages
      --cache <CACHE>        Location of disk cache
      --config <CONFIG>      File to read configuration values from
      --loglevel <LOGLEVEL>  Log output level/directive
  -q, --quiet                Disable all output
      --json                 Format output as JSON
  -h, --help                 Print help (see more with '--help')
  -V, --version              Print version

That’s it for now, happy hacking!