From Monorepo to Turborepo: Managing Multiple Projects

Monorepos are repositories containing multiple related projects. They are beneficial when projects share libraries, contracts, changes, and tooling. However, managing dependencies and packages in a monorepo can be challenging. Workspaces in npm CLI provide a solution by allowing multiple packages to be managed within a single top-level root package. This enables shared packages without each project managing local references and updates independently.

With workspaces, each package declares its own dependencies, which are installed and managed from the repository root. This allows for easier management of shared packages and relationships between projects. For example, the Web project can depend on shared API types in the workspace using the `workspace:*` protocol. This allows pnpm to use the local workspace package instead of resolving the package from a local file dependency.

While workspaces simplify package management, they are not a complete solution. As the number of projects and dependencies grows, coordinating builds, tests, and other tasks becomes increasingly complex. Task orchestration can help by defining a task graph that describes dependencies between tasks and determining their execution order. This can automate the selection of relevant tasks based on package relationships and changes, making it easier to manage the development process in a large monorepo.