Yalc

Yalc is a tool designed to enhance the workflow of developers working with yarn/npm packages locally. It serves as a simple local repository for packages under development, allowing you to use the latest or work-in-progress versions of these packages in other local projects without needing to publish them to a remote registry. This approach circumvents the common issues associated with symlinked packages, such as dependency resolution problems and file system interoperability.

When you run yalc publish in your package directory, Yalc captures the necessary files and stores them in a global store, typically located at ~/.yalc. To use a package in another project, you can run yalc add my-package, which pulls the package content into a local .yalc directory and updates package.json with a file-based dependency. Alternatively, yalc link my-package creates a symlink to the package content in node_modules without modifying package.json.

Yalc also supports advanced features like automatically pushing updates to all installations with yalc push, maintaining consistency through a yalc.lock file, and working seamlessly with Yarn, npm, and Pnmp workspaces. Additionally, it provides commands to clean up installations, override the default package store folder, and control output verbosity and color.

For installation, you can use npm (npm i yalc -g) or Yarn (yarn global add yalc). The tool is particularly useful for managing multiple interdependent packages in development, offering a more robust and flexible alternative to traditional linking methods.