I’m working on a project and need to find the yarn command that works like npm ci. The npm ci command does a fresh install that’s faster and stricter than regular npm install. It skips some features meant for users and helps catch problems that might happen with normal installs.
I’ve been looking around but can’t find a clear answer about what yarn command does the same thing. Maybe yarn doesn’t need a special command like this because of how it works? Or maybe there are some settings I need to use together?
Can someone explain what’s the best way to get the same result as npm ci when using yarn?
Yarn also has yarn install --check-files which validates that packages in node_modules match what’s expected from the lockfile. I’ve found this useful when switching branches or pulling changes where someone updated dependencies. Using --frozen-lockfile --check-files together gets you closest to npm ci behavior in terms of strictness. Yarn’s default behavior is already more deterministic than npm install, so you might not need the extra flags unless you’re replicating a CI environment locally or want that extra validation.
For Yarn 2+, use yarn install --immutable. For Yarn 1.x, it’s yarn install --frozen-lockfile --production=false. The immutable flag is actually stricter - it won’t let you change the lockfile or yarn.lock format at all. I’ve used both in CI/CD setups, and immutable catches dependency mismatches way better than frozen-lockfile. Don’t expect the same speed boost you get with npm ci though - Yarn’s caching makes the difference less dramatic.
try yarn install --frozen-lockfile! it won’t mess with the lockfile and will error if depedencies aren’t right. it’s like npm ci, but honestly yarn installs are pretty quick already, so u probably won’t see a huge change.