A simple monorepo sample reference using turborepo, lernajs and pnpm

• monorepo-next
  • Getting started
  • Features
  • What's inside
  • Configuration
    • Workspace management & dependency hoisting
    • Package versioning
    • Conventional commits
    • Commit message linting
    • Configurable Build System
  • Structure
  • Sample packages
  • Scripts

Managing monorepos has become more than a trending topic but a key argument to consider and to master in managing large and complex projects, or even projects including multiple packages. There is a huge literature all around about techniques, management, pros&cons, benefits and more, a good place to find references could be Awesome monorepo.

Usually managing monorepos in nodejs/javascript is often made using lernajs althought some alternatives during the time has been implemented, The basic toolchain usually relied on lerna and a package manager between npm and yarn.

Althought there are several tools and farmeworks too to manage monorepos for several languages & runtimes, this repository aim to provide a simple sample reference for nodejs monorepos considering a powerful and strong toolchain splitting the responsibilities in:

1. Build system
2. Monorepo management
3. Package management

• Configurable build system
• Dependency hoisting
• Workspace management
• (Independent) Packages versioning
• Conventional commits
• Commit message linting
• Changelog generation per package
• Git integration

This monorepo configuration makes use of the following packages per feature:

1. Workspaces

• enabled through pnpm within the file pnpm-workspace.yaml
• manage packages in packages folder
• exclude everything inside any test folder

2. Dependency hoisting

• configured within .npmrc file
• shamefully-hoist: true

3. Packages management & resolution

• configured within .npmrc file
• prefer-workspace-package: true
• save-workspace-protocol: false

1. version command enhancement

• configured within lerna.json file, versioning supported only in main branch using conventionalCommits through a chore(release) message:

  ...
  "command": {
    "version": {
      "allowBranch": "main",
      "conventionalCommits": true,
      "exact": true,
      "message": "chore(release): %s"
    }
  },
  ...

2. version independent

• configured within lerna.json file, permit an independent versioning strategy per affected package:

  ...
  "version": "independent",
  ...

3. npmClient override

• configured within lerna.json file, permit to use as npmClient a different package manager, here pnpm

  ...
  "npmClient": "pnpm",
  ...

4. workspaces

• althought workspaces are managed and configured using pnpm, lerna requires to have visibility of such configuration within lerna.json file

  ...
  "useWorkspaces": "true",
  ...

1. Changelog generation per package

• configured within package.json file, permit to specify what strategy to use for changelog generation based on conventional commits. Considering the independent versioning management per package through lerna, the package cz-lerna-changelog permit to manage it according to monorepo packages:

  ...
  "config": {
    "commitizen": {
      "path": "./node_modules/cz-lerna-changelog"
    }
  }
  ...

conventional commits are then managed via terminal as

1. Git integration

• configured within package.json file, permit to apply linting to commit messages

  ...
  "husky": {
    "hooks": {
      "commit-msg": "commitlint -e $HUSKY_GIT_PARAMS"
    }
  },
  ...

1. Turborepo integration

• configured within package.json file

 ...
 "turbo": {
   "baseBranch": "origin/main"
 },
 ...

Note: Although Turborepo support a rich and versatile configuration and toolchain for managing monorepos, this monorepo is configured for minimal integration alongside to lernajs for versioning and changelog generation.

At present, a sample pipeline is not yet configured.

The actual monorepo configuration support the management of packages within the usual packages folder

As a sample structure, there are two sample packages

1. service-one
2. service-two

both are implemented using a sample Fastify structure with:

• fastify
• fastify-cli
• fastify-autoload

The monorepo manage the following scripts: