How to Install Yarn on Ubuntu Linux

How to install and use Yarn on Ubuntu Linux

As described above, Yarn is a fast, reliable, and secure JavaScript dependency manager that automates installing, updating, configuring, and managing npm packages.

Below is how to install it on Ubuntu Linux.

Add Yarn APT Repository

You need to add the Yarn APT repository to your Ubuntu system so it knows where to find Yarn. This step also involves adding the repository’s security key to make sure the packages you download are safe. Running a few commands will get the repository ready for installing Yarn.

You’ll first need to add the repository’s GPG key to authenticate packages being installed from there. Run the commands below to add the Yarn repository’s GPG key to Ubuntu.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install curl
curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

Next, run the commands below to add the repository

echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list

That’s all you need to install Yarn.

After that, run the commands below to install Yarn

sudo apt update
sudo apt install yarn

If you already have Node.js installed, simply run the commands below to install Yarn, but skip Node.js packages and dependencies.

sudo apt install --no-install-recommends yarn

Verify Yarn is Installed

After installing Yarn on Ubuntu, you can easily check if it’s working by verifying its version. Simply type `yarn –version` into your terminal. This command will show you the specific version number of Yarn that is now installed on your computer.

yarn --version

The output should be something similar to the line below:

1.10.1

Now that you have Yarn installed on your Ubuntu system,  here are some of the most common commands you’ll need.

You can create a new Yarn project by running the `yarn init` command in your terminal. This command starts the Yarn package manager's initialization process, guiding you through setting up the `package.json` file, which holds information about your project and its dependencies.

yarn init myproject

The init script will ask you several questions. You can either answer or press to use the default values.

yarn init v1.10.1
question name (richard): 
question version (1.0.0): 
question description: 
question entry point (index.js): 
question repository url: 
question author: 
question license (MIT): 
question private: 
success Saved package.json
Done in 13.40s.

After that, the script will create a basic package.json file containing the information you provided above.

Upgrading dependencies

Once you have Yarn installed on Ubuntu, updating your project’s dependencies is straightforward. You can use the `yarn upgrade` command to update everything at once, or you can choose to update a specific package by name or version. If no package name is given, Yarn updates all dependencies.

yarn upgrade
yarn upgrade [package_name]
yarn upgrade [package_name]@[version_or_tag]

For more about using Yarn, check this page.

Conclusion:

This post showed you how to install Yarn on Ubuntu 20.04 | 18.04. If you find any error above, please use the comment form below to report.