feedback - can every app/lib have their own package.json?

This is a feedback. I using nx and it works very well to my clients 😃

One thing though, currently I have one package.json with many dependencies of my apps and libs and its hard to tell which dependency in use in which apps/libs.

It will be great if each app and lib will have its own package.json with the packages that app/lib uses.

Even all dependencies are the same versions, I want to know in ease what packages I use for the app.

Why? sometimes I want to move the apps from repo to another repo and I need to take the package.json and copy and filter the packages that the app/lib not use.

(In lerna monorepos for example I have each package the package.json`)

NX Team, what do you think about it? this can be done in nx?

[viktornord]

@FrozenPandaz Having single package.json is error prone. Let me explain why:

• in microservices world every service is supposed to be independent and isolated and having a single package.json already violates this
• during the build process all dependencies are packaged within each and every build unless you configure webpack with tree shaking which you are forced to do in order to reduce the building time and build size
• separate apps (microservices) are supposed to be maintained by different teams and having a single package.json forces all teams to migrate to new version of the lib / framework at the same time instead of being able to plan migration when they decide according to their workload
• when you migrate to the new major version of a certain lib you can’t deploy your microservice independently which is one of the main benefits of the microservices, since the breaking change is brought to all your apps and you are forced to migrate all of them which slows down the delivery

Given that I may understand some people may still want to have single package.json for simplicity but IMO this breaks flexibility and separation of concerns. I don’t see any valid point in forcing people to use single package.json as the main approach in their projects.

Please give us an option to be able to separate the package.json per app and still benefit of all the nx features.

Thank you!

[husny-ahamed-mg]

Yes, you can have multiple package.json for each app and lib but it will not be generated by default.

We strongly recommend using a single package.json in the root of the repo but you can setup your repo differently if you so wish. Nx should still work.

Some of us do not find it a good idea to use a single package.json for all the apps sorry. Could you please help us with some instructions on how to maintain separate package.json for separate apps.