CDR0 polyrepo

The idea of monorepos is great, but it is swimming against the tide in today's software ecosystem. Virtually all tooling nowadays assumes that one Github repo holds one and only one 'thing'. So, polyrepo can give some of the benefits of monorepos, but still allow your repos to fit into the mold of one project per Github repo.

Incantations

Assuming you have @mygreat/library and @mygreat/app.

All the Repos Must be Siblings

dev will be the parent of all your repos:

cd
mkdir dev && cd $_
mkdir library
mkdir app

# ... Lots of other work to setup the repos.

In each repo, add polyrepo, and prepare the magic directory for your proxy scripts:

cd
cd library
npm i -S @cdr0/polyrepo
mkdir polyrepo

cd
cd app
npm i -S @cdr0/polyrepo
mkdir polyrepo
touch polyrepo/mygreat-library.js
touch polyrepo/mygreat-other-thing.js
# ... touch more libs / packages ...

cd
cd somewhereelse
# ... npm, mkdir, touch ...

# ... other repos as siblings of `library` and `app`

Each proxy file will look similar to these:

// app/polyrepo/mygreat-library.js

// Build the prequire (poly-require) function
const polyrepoRequire   = require('@cdr0/polyrepo')(__dirname);

// The proxy function.
const prequire  = function (name) {
  return polyrepoRequire(name) || require(name);
};

module.exports = prequire('@mygreat/library');

// app/polyrepo/mygreat-other-thing.js

// Build the prequire (poly-require) function
const polyrepoRequire   = require('@cdr0/polyrepo')(__dirname);

// The proxy function.
const prequire  = function (name) {
  return polyrepoRequire(name) || require(name);
};

module.exports = prequire('@mygreat/other-thing');

Then, to bring one into a file:

// app/index.js

const greatLibrary  = require('./polyrepo/mygreat-library');

When running on your development workstation, greatLibrary will be the repo that is a sibling to the app package, and will be the package from NPM otherwise.

Optional (Other Locations)

polyrepo will look at sibling directories by default. You can also define CDR0_POLYREPO_ROOT and point it to a directory that will be assumed to hold packages to look for.

export CDR0_POLYREPO_ROOT="$HOME/dev"

Some Work Required

polyrepo is a small project, so some of the work is left for the reader.

• Create one .js file for each item in the multi-project-repo, in the <root>/polyrepo/ directory.
• Require it instead of the general name.
• Keep the entry in package.json for it, that's what will get pulled in outside your active-development environment.

Gotchas / Limitations

• All of the repos must be checked out to sibling directories.
• You must use the env var: CDR0_POLYREPO_ROOT to point to the parent directory.
• You do not get bin linking for your development workstation.

TODO

• [ ] Scripts to manage the .../polyrepo/ directory, and package.json
• [ ] Scripts to allow installed packages' binaries to be called via the NPM scripts mechanism.
• [ ] A mo-betta way to organize all of the repos on your development workstation.
• [ ] Scripts to link bin items into your path.
• [ ] Scripts to cross-link bin items