What are Monorepos?

A monorepo is a single repository (e.g., on GitHub) that houses all the code for your frontend, backend, and DevOps in one place.

Do You Need to Master Monorepos as a Full-Stack Engineer?

Not necessarily. Most of the time, they’re already set up by DevOps, and your focus will be on following best practices. However, it's beneficial to learn how to set up a monorepo from scratch.

Why Monorepos?

1. Shared Code Reuse: Centralizing code in a monorepo allows for easier reuse across different parts of the project, reducing duplication and promoting consistency.

2. Enhanced Collaboration: A monorepo facilitates better collaboration among team members by providing a unified codebase, making it easier to coordinate changes and share updates.

3. Optimized Builds and CI/CD: Tools like TurboRepo leverage smart caching and efficient task execution strategies to significantly cut down build and testing times, improving the efficiency of your CI/CD pipelines.

4. Centralized Tooling and Configuration: Managing build tools, linters, formatters, and other configurations is streamlined in a monorepo, as you can maintain a single set of tools and configurations for the entire project.

Common monorepo framework in Node.js

1. Lerna - https://lerna.js.org/

2. nx - https://github.com/nrwl/nx

3. Turborepo - https://turbo.build/ — Not exactly a monorepo framework

4. Yarn/npm workspaces - https://classic.yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/workspaces/

We’ll be going through turborepo since it’s the most relevant one today and provides more things (like build optimisations) that others don’t.

History of Turborepo

1. Created by Jared Palmer

2. In December 2021 Acquired/aqui-hired by Vercel

3. Mild speculation/came from a random source - Pretty hefty dealp

4. They’ve built a bunch of products, Turborepo is the most used one

Build system vs Build system orchestrator vs Monorepo framework

Build System

A build system automates the conversion of source code into executable binary code. For JavaScript and TypeScript projects, this includes tasks like transpiling TypeScript to JavaScript, bundling multiple files into fewer ones, minifying to reduce file size, and more. In addition to building code, it may also handle testing, linting, and deployment.

Build System Orchestrator

TurboRepo functions more as a build system orchestrator rather than a direct build tool. It doesn't handle tasks like transpilation, bundling, or minification on its own. Instead, TurboRepo allows you to define tasks in your monorepo that leverage other build tools to perform those actions, coordinating and optimizing their execution.

These tools can include anything from tsc, vite etc

Monorepo Framework

A monorepo framework provides tools and best practices for managing multiple packages or applications within a single repository. It handles tasks such as dependency management between packages and workspace configuration, ensuring that different parts of the project can interact efficiently and are well-organized.

Turborepo as a build system orchestrator

Turborepo is a build system orchestrator .

TurboRepo's standout feature is its capability to efficiently manage and optimize task execution across your monorepo. It achieves this by:

1. Caching: TurboRepo stores the results of tasks in a cache. If you run a task again without modifying any inputs (source files, dependencies, or configuration), TurboRepo can use the cached output instead of re-executing the task. This approach can greatly reduce build times, particularly in continuous integration environments.

2. Parallelization: TurboRepo executes independent tasks simultaneously, making optimal use of your machine's resources. This approach shortens the total time required to complete all tasks in your project.

3. Dependency Graph Awareness: TurboRepo is aware of the dependency graph within your monorepo, meaning it understands how packages depend on each other. This enables it to run tasks in the proper sequence, ensuring that all dependencies are handled correctly.

Conclusion

Monorepos provide a unified approach to managing code across various components of a project, promoting efficiency through shared code reuse, enhanced collaboration, and streamlined tooling. While mastering monorepos isn't strictly necessary for all full-stack engineers, understanding their setup and benefits can be valuable.

Tools like TurboRepo exemplify the advantages of monorepos by offering sophisticated build system orchestration. TurboRepo's caching, parallelization, and dependency graph awareness features optimize task execution, making it a powerful asset for managing complex projects efficiently. As the landscape of development tools continues to evolve, familiarity with monorepo frameworks and orchestrators like TurboRepo can significantly enhance your workflow and project management capabilities.