CODEWITHSUNDEEP
angularmonoreponrwl
Esfandiar
Esfandiar

Reputation: 360

Include a package for some libs in Nrwl/Nx workspace

It seems like in a Nrwl/Nx workspace there is only a single package.json file. Now if we have multiple applications, each dependent on different packages, then we have to include all of those package in the single package.json file and wouldn't that increase the size of all the apps when they're built? (presumable vendor.js file).

For example if app-1 depends on d3 and app-2 depends on ag-grid libraries, wouldn't both of these libraries be included for both app-1 and app-2 unnecessarily? When the user of app-1 visits the app, ag-grid wouldn't need to be loaded for them.

Am I correct in my understanding or am I missing something? If my assumption is correct, is there a way to solve this?

How about lazy loaded libraries? For instance an "admin" library which is only available to some users (with admin role) may need certain graphing packages, which wouldn't have to be loaded for all the users.

Thank you.

Upvotes: 15

Views: 17600

Answers (2)

Daniel Cooke
Daniel Cooke

Reputation: 1634

The accepted answer is short-sighted.

Yes a single package.json is fantastic for development, it allows you to co-ordinate versions for all your dependencies and hoist them to the root. But when you want to deploy an application - you don't want to ship the dependencies for every application in your monorepo

In-fact there was an open issue about this exact problem on nx for quite some time.

Solution 2022

Now you can use the generatePackageJson option in your project.json build target options, to create a package.json for each app you wish to deploy.

Note: this is not documented, but you can read about it in the linked Issue, and merged PR.

Upvotes: 6

mgm87
mgm87

Reputation: 894

One of the benefits of using nrwl/nx is the single package.json file. Using a single package.json is great because when you need to upgrade something like rxjs you only have to do it once and your entire codebase it running on the same set of dependencies.

It doesn't effect the size of the compiled code because an app will only include the code it uses thanks to webpack bundling and tree shaking. So there is no risk of D3 showing up in a bundle for an app that doesn't use it. In actuality you could have every npm package listed in your package.json and it wouldn't effect your bundle size.

nrwl/nx is 100% intended to use only one package.json file. Don't try to break it up if you are using nx.

Upvotes: 17

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