What's the difference between `yarn link` and `npm link`?

Question

Seems that sometimes npm link works in situations in which yarn link gives weird errors. I've noticed it a few times. I thought they were both making symlinks under the hood-- are they doing something different?

Answer 1

The yarn link and npm link mechanisms are different in the following ways:

• yarn creates a link directory at the same level as global, where all link softlinks are stored
• npm modifies the packaged files directly to one address in the public package management path /usr/local/lib/node_modules.

It is possible that the error message is related to yarn's path under generated links, or it could be something else, it still depends on the specific error message.

Answer 2

Yarn link simply does not work even in the latest version (currently 4.0.2.)