What is nx?
The nx npm package is a suite of powerful, extensible dev tools to help you architect, test, build, and develop your software projects. It is particularly well-suited for monorepo development, where multiple projects coexist in a single repository. Nx provides tools for project scaffolding, dependency graph analysis, affected change analysis, and more.
What are nx's main functionalities?
Project Scaffolding
This command sets up a new workspace. Nx supports many presets to scaffold applications using various frameworks like Angular, React, or Node.js.
npx create-nx-workspace@latest myworkspace
Generating Components
Generates a new component within a specified project in the workspace. This helps maintain consistency and follows best practices.
nx generate component my-component --project=my-app
Running Tasks
Executes a specific task, such as building a project. Nx uses an executor to run tasks which can be configured for different environments.
nx run my-app:build
Affected Change Analysis
Determines which apps and libs are affected by changes to the current git branch, and performs the build task only for those.
nx affected:build
Dependency Graph
Visualizes the dependency graph of the workspace, showing how projects depend on one another. This is useful for understanding the structure and ensuring that changes do not have unintended consequences.
nx dep-graph
Other packages similar to nx
lerna
Lerna is a tool for managing JavaScript projects with multiple packages, optimizing the workflow around managing multi-package repositories with git and npm. Compared to Nx, Lerna focuses more on the versioning and publishing of multi-package repositories, whereas Nx provides a broader range of tools for development and build optimization.