Modern Monorepo Boilerplate

Usage

Running this project should be very easy, quick and automatic using monorepo apporach.

• Install lerna first: yarn global add lerna
• Run yarn bootstrap to install all dependencies and setup monorepo symlinks using lerna.
• Run yarn start to start development server with all packages included, by default you'll run @namespace/react-app.
• Run yarn test to test all packages simultaneously.

Setup explained

Tooling

• Monorepo is done using npm and lerna.

  • Packages are automatically linked together, meaning you can do cross-package work within the repo with hot module reloading and without any building.
  • Commonly used dependencies are hoisted from root, and only appear in the root package.json.
  • All shared dependencies appear only as peerDependecies in each package.
  • Running yarn build makes production-ready builds of all packages.
  • Running yarn test runs tests for all packages at once.
  • Each package has its own scripts and dependencies keys. They are being installed in the root node_modules and you can still run standalone commands within each package from its scripts.
  • Adding new packages is as simple as dropping an existing package in the packages folder, and re-running yarn bootstrap.

• Sources and tests are written in strict TypeScript.

  • We use a single, common, tsconfig.json, from which all other tsconfig.json files inherit (using "extends").
  • Each project has src folder, each with their own tsconfig.json. This allows us to define which @types packages are accessible on a per-folder basis (src should not have access to test globals).

• Testing is done using jest and enzyme.

  • Light, battle-tested, projects with few dependencies.
  • Components are snapshot-tested.
  • All tests are written in TypeScript and linted via ESLint

Included sample packages

• @namespace/components

  • React components library.
  • Built as cjs (Node consumption) and esm (bundler consumption).
  • All componenents are linked dynamically without rebuilding or compiling.

• @namespace/react-app

  • React application.
  • Built with minimal CRA setup.
  • Uses the @namespace/components package (also inside monorepo).

Basic structure and configurations

packages/
    some-package/
        src/
            some-folder/
            index.ts         // combined exports
        tsconfig.json        // extends ./tsconfig.json
        package.json         // package-specific deps and scripts
        README.md            // docs are important

README.md         // docs are important
.gitignore        // github's default node gitignore with customizations
.npmrc            // internal npm repository config
lerna.json        // lerna configuration
LICENSE           // root license file. picked up by github
package.json      // common dev deps and workspace-wide scripts
setupTests.ts     // enzyme and all tests setup file
tsconfig.json     // common typescript configuration

Dependency management

Traditionally, working with projects in separate repositories makes it difficult to keep versions of devDependencies aligned, as each project can specify its own devDependency versions. Monorepos simplify this, because devDependencies are shared between all packages within the monorepo. Taking this into account, we use the following dependency structure:

• shared dependencies and devDependencies are placed in the root package.json
• dependencies and devDependencies are placed in the package.json of the relevant package requiring them, as each package is published separately
• commonly used dependencies are placed in peerDependencies

New dependencies can be added to the root package.json using npm:

yarn add <package name> -W [-D]

Some packages depend on sibling packages within the monorepo. For example, in this repo, @namespace/react-app depends on @namespace/components. This relationship is just a normal dependency, and can be described in the package.json of @namespace/react-app like so:

"dependencies": {
  "@namespace/components": "<package version>"
}