@nrwl/devkit

What is @nrwl/devkit?

The @nrwl/devkit package is a set of utilities designed to improve the developer experience by providing tools for building, testing, and managing Angular and React projects within a monorepo setup. It is part of the Nx ecosystem, which focuses on bringing a unified approach to working with modern web technologies.

What are @nrwl/devkit's main functionalities?

Generating Components

This feature allows developers to programmatically generate components or other files within their project. The code sample demonstrates how to use the `generateFiles` function to create a new component in a library within the monorepo.

import { generateFiles } from '@nrwl/devkit';
function generateMyComponent(tree, schema) {
  generateFiles(tree, path.join(__dirname, './files'), '/libs/mylib/src/lib', {
    tmpl: '',
    name: schema.name
  });
}

Updating JSON Configuration

This feature provides a straightforward way to update JSON files, such as `tsconfig.json` or `.eslintrc.json`, programmatically. The code sample shows how to modify the `tsconfig.base.json` to add a new path mapping for a library.

import { updateJson } from '@nrwl/devkit';
function updateTsConfig(tree) {
  updateJson(tree, 'tsconfig.base.json', (json) => {
    json.compilerOptions.paths['@myorg/mylib'] = ['libs/mylib/src/index.ts'];
    return json;
  });
}

Executing Schematic Tasks

This feature enables developers to execute tasks such as adding project configurations or formatting files. The code sample illustrates how to add a new library configuration to the workspace and then format all files according to the workspace's prettier or eslint configurations.

import { addProjectConfiguration, Tree, formatFiles } from '@nrwl/devkit';
function addMyLib(tree: Tree) {
  addProjectConfiguration(tree, 'my-lib', {
    root: './libs/my-lib',
    projectType: 'library',
    targets: {},
  });
  formatFiles(tree);
}

Other packages similar to @nrwl/devkit

lerna

Lerna is a tool for managing JavaScript projects with multiple packages, similar to the Nx workspace concept. While Lerna focuses on multi-package repositories (monorepos), it does not provide the same level of integration for Angular and React projects or the same developer tools and utilities as @nrwl/devkit.

yeoman-generator

Yeoman is a generic scaffolding system allowing the creation of any kind of app. It provides generators for a wide variety of applications and frameworks. Compared to @nrwl/devkit, Yeoman is more flexible but lacks the specific optimizations and integrations for Angular and React projects within a monorepo setup.

README

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Nx Devkit

What is Nx?

🔎 Smart, Extensible Build Framework

Nx is a smart and extensible build framework to help you architect, test, and build at any scale — integrating seamlessly with modern technologies and frameworks while providing a distributed graph-based task execution, computation caching, smart rebuilds of affected projects, powerful code generators, editor support, GitHub apps, and more.

Best-in-Class Support for Monorepos

Nx provides distributed graph-based task execution and computation caching.

Nx is smart. It analyzes your workspace and figures out what can be affected by every code change. That's why Nx doesn't rebuild and retest everything on every commit--it only rebuilds what is necessary .

Nx partitions commands into a graph of smaller tasks. Nx then runs those tasks in parallel, and it can even distribute them across multiple machines without any configuration.

Nx also uses a distributed computation cache. If someone has already built or tested similar code, Nx will use their results to speed up the command for everyone else.

Holistic Dev Experience Powered by an Advanced CLI and Editor Plugins

Nx helps scale your development from one team building one application to many teams building multiple frontend and backend applications all in the same workspace. When using Nx, developers have a holistic dev experience powered by an advanced CLI (with editor plugins), capabilities for controlled code sharing and consistent code generation.

Rich Plugin Ecosystem

Nx is an open platform with plugins for many modern tools and frameworks. It has support for TypeScript, React, Angular, Cypress, Jest, Prettier, Nest.js, Next.js, Storybook, Ionic among others. With Nx, you get a consistent dev experience regardless of the tools used.

Getting Started

Creating an Nx Workspace

Using npx

npx create-nx-workspace

Using npm init

npm init nx-workspace

Using yarn create

yarn create nx-workspace

The create-nx-workspace command will ask you to select a preset, which will configure some plugins and create your applications to help you get started.

? What to create in the new workspace (Use arrow keys)
❯ empty             [an empty workspace with a layout that works best for building apps]
  oss               [an empty workspace with a layout that works best for open-source projects]
  web components    [a workspace with a single app built using web components]
  angular           [a workspace with a single Angular application]
  angular-nest      [a workspace with a full stack application (Angular + Nest)]
  react             [a workspace with a single React application]
  react-express     [a workspace with a full stack application (React + Express)]
  next.js           [a workspace with a single Next.js application]

Select the preset that works best for you.

Documentation & Resources

Even though Nx isn't technology specific, we provide 3 separate flavours of the documentation site to it make it easier for you to get up and running. For every link below, you will be able to select whether you want your examples to be written in React, Node or Angular.

• Nx Documentation and Guides
• Intro into Nx
• Interactive Tutorial with Videos

Quick Start Videos

• Scale Your React Development with Nx
• Scale your Node Development with Nx
• Modern Angular with Nx Dev Tools

Courses

Scale React Development with Nx	Nx Workspaces	Advanced Nx Workspaces

Videos, Blogs, Books, Examples

• Nx Dev Tools for Monorepos, In-Depth Explainer (React)

• Nx Dev Tools for Monorepos, In-Depth Explainer (Angular)

• Youtube Channel with Nx-Related Videos

• Blog Posts About Nx

• Angular Enterprise Monorepo Patterns Book (free)

• Nx Examples Repo

Engage with the Core Team and the Community

• Nx Office Hours Playlist on YouTube. It's a regular YouTube stream where we talk all things Nx. Join the stream, ask questions, etc.
• Follow Nx on Twitter