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Monorepos with npm Workspaces: Managing Multiple Packages in a Single Repository
Managing multiple packages in a project can get complicated pretty quickly. But what if I told you there’s a way to keep everything organized in one place without sacrificing clarity? Welcome to monorepos with npm workspaces, a strategy that lets you manage multiple packages within a single repository — making things much simpler for larger projects. Let’s break it down.
What is a Monorepo?
A monorepo is a repository that holds the code for multiple projects or packages within it. Instead of maintaining separate repositories for different components of your application (like your frontend, backend, and shared libraries), a monorepo keeps them all together. This approach has gained popularity because it makes managing related codebases easier, improving collaboration and consistency across teams and projects.
Before we dive into how npm Workspaces help, here’s a simple breakdown of what a monorepo looks like:
/my-monorepo
/packages
/frontend
/backend
/shared-lib
Each folder (like frontend
, backend
, or shared-lib
) represents an individual package, but they all live in one central repository.