Cannot serve @nrwl/node project referencing a buildable library

Current Behavior

Similar to https://github.com/nrwl/nx/issues/3131, if you try to reference a library with a build target then it cannot be resolved by webpack.

Expected Behavior

It shouldn’t matter if a library is buildable/publishable or neither, it should be able to be referenced by applications.

Steps to Reproduce

Create a new workspace, then

yarn add @nrwl/node
nx generate @nrwl/node:application --name=test-app
nx generate @nrwl/node:library --name=test-lib --buildable --importPath=@test-org/test-lib

Then update apps/test-app/main.ts

import { testLib } from "@test-org/test-lib";

console.log('Hello World!');
console.log(someBuildableLib())

Failure Logs

yarn nx serve test-app

Results in error: Module not found: Error: Can't resolve '@test-org/test-lib'

If you remove test-lib.architect.build from workspace.json the problem goes away.

Environment

  nx : Not Found
  @nrwl/angular : Not Found
  @nrwl/cli : 10.3.1
  @nrwl/cypress : Not Found
  @nrwl/eslint-plugin-nx : 10.3.1
  @nrwl/express : Not Found
  @nrwl/jest : 10.3.1
  @nrwl/linter : 10.3.1
  @nrwl/nest : Not Found
  @nrwl/next : Not Found
  @nrwl/node : 10.3.1
  @nrwl/react : Not Found
  @nrwl/schematics : Not Found
  @nrwl/tao : 10.3.1
  @nrwl/web : Not Found
  @nrwl/workspace : 10.3.1
  typescript : 4.0.3

[pf1gura]

Solution

I managed to fix the issue by adding "buildLibsFromSource": true to the build target of the application.

This will basically cause the libraries to behave as they weren’t buildable/publishable in the context of that application. They will be bundled in the main.js file of generated application. And original libraries still have their own build target that can be used to build and publish the library if that is something we want.

Explanation

That is what I found about this flow. When this option is disabled, nx generates temporary tsconfig with path mappings in tmp/apps/app-name folder that expects libraries to be built into their destination location (dist/lib/lib-name by default). This tsconfig is then used by the application to locate the dependencies.

• tsconfig is generated here: https://github.com/nrwl/nx/blob/2824794a92913624e59d00201ef5dfa936f842fe/packages/workspace/src/utils/buildable-libs-utils.ts#L133
• buildLibsFromSource option is handled here: https://github.com/nrwl/nx/blob/2824794a92/packages/node/src/builders/build/build.impl.ts#L40

[bekos]

Sorry for late response 😞 Following the steps, using the latest version Nx, I am not able to reproduce the error. I will close this, as it seems that this is already fixed, but feel free to reopen if you still have issues.