Monorepo (Nx, Turborepo)

Concept#

Polyrepo vs Monorepo#

In a polyrepo (many repositories) setup, each project has its own repository. Sharing code requires publishing packages to npm, managing versions, and dealing with dependency hell.

A monorepo places all applications (frontend apps, backend APIs) and shared packages (UI components, API clients, TypeScript typings) in a single Git repository:

my-monorepo/
├── apps/
│   ├── admin-portal/     <-- Consumer of ui & api
│   └── public-website/
├── packages/
│   ├── ui/               <-- Shared UI components
│   ├── api-client/       <-- Shared fetch API clients
│   └── ts-config/        <-- Shared tsconfig profiles
├── package.json          <-- Workspace config
└── turbo.json            <-- Turborepo caching config

Package Manager Workspaces & Internal Links#

Modern package managers (pnpm, yarn, npm) support workspaces. A workspace links local packages dynamically inside node_modules without publishing them:

 
 
# pnpm-workspace.yaml
packages:
  - 'apps/*'
  - 'packages/*'

In apps/admin-portal/package.json:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "@my-org/ui": "workspace:*"
  }
}