Daniele Cammarata

Managing a monorepo can be challenging, especially as the number of projects and dependencies grows. Enter Turborepo, a high-performance build system for JavaScript and TypeScript codebases that makes managing monorepos easier and more efficient. In this blog post, we’ll explore what Turborepo is, its benefits, and how to get started with it.

What is Turborepo?

Turborepo is a tool designed to manage monorepos, which are repositories that contain multiple projects, often sharing dependencies and configurations. Turborepo optimizes the development workflow by providing incremental builds, intelligent caching, and parallel execution, making it faster and more efficient to work with large codebases.

Key Features of Turborepo

Incremental Builds: Only rebuilds the parts of the codebase that have changed, saving time and resources.
Intelligent Caching: Caches previous build results to avoid redundant work, significantly speeding up subsequent builds.
Parallel Execution: Executes tasks in parallel where possible, making full use of available CPU cores.
Remote Caching: Shares cache between different environments, such as local machines and CI/CD pipelines, to reduce build times.
Task Orchestration: Manages complex task dependencies and ensures they are executed in the correct order.

Benefits of Using Turborepo

Faster Builds: By leveraging caching and parallel execution, Turborepo can dramatically reduce build times.
Simplified CI/CD: With remote caching, CI/CD pipelines can reuse build artifacts from local development, reducing the need to build everything from scratch.
Improved Developer Experience: Developers spend less time waiting for builds and can focus more on coding.
Consistent Environment: Ensures that builds are consistent across different environments, minimizing the risk of “it works on my machine” issues.

Getting Started with Turborepo

Step 1: Installation

First, install Turborepo as a dev dependency in your monorepo:

npm install --save-dev turbo

Step 2: Configuring Turborepo

Create a turbo.json configuration file at the root of your monorepo:

{
  "$schema": "https://turbo.build/schema.json",
  "pipeline": {
    "build": {
      "dependsOn": ["^build"],
      "outputs": ["dist/**"]
    },
    "test": {
      "dependsOn": ["build"],
      "outputs": []
    },
    "lint": {
      "outputs": []
    }
  }
}

In this configuration:

build depends on the build tasks of dependent packages (indicated by ^build).
test depends on the build task.
lint does not have any dependencies.

Step 3: Running Tasks with Turborepo

You can now use Turborepo to run tasks defined in your configuration. For example, to run the build task:

npx turbo run build

Turborepo will handle the dependencies and caching automatically.

Step 4: Using Remote Caching

To take full advantage of Turborepo’s remote caching, you need to set up a remote cache provider. Turborepo supports several providers, including Vercel, Redis, and S3.

Here’s an example of setting up remote caching with Vercel:

Install the Vercel CLI:
```
npm install -g vercel
```
Login to Vercel:
```
vercel login
```
Link your project to Vercel:
```
vercel link
```

Add the remote cache configuration to turbo.json:

{
  "$schema": "https://turbo.build/schema.json",
  "pipeline": {
    "build": {
      "dependsOn": ["^build"],
      "outputs": ["dist/**"]
    },
    "test": {
      "dependsOn": ["build"],
      "outputs": []
    },
    "lint": {
      "outputs": []
    }
  },
  "remoteCache": {
    "url": "vercel"
  }
}

Step 5: Running Tasks in CI/CD

Integrate Turborepo into your CI/CD pipeline by adding commands to your configuration. For example, in GitHub Actions:

name: CI

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: '14'
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npx turbo run build --cache-dir=.cache/turbo

Conclusion

Turborepo is a powerful tool for managing monorepos, offering significant performance improvements through incremental builds, intelligent caching, and parallel execution. By integrating Turborepo into your workflow, you can streamline your development process, reduce build times, and improve overall efficiency. Give Turborepo a try and experience the benefits for yourself!

Turborepo - Intro