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Why Monorepo Projects Sucks: Performance Considerations with Nx
- A monorepo is where multiple projects, often microservices or libraries, live in a single repository. But the monorepo approach might not always be the best solution, especially when performance is a key concern.
- Monorepos with hundreds of libraries or services means that dependency graphs can get extremely large. When a change is made, Nx needs to analyze dependencies and determine what needs to be rebuilt. In some cases, this process can get complex and slow, causing longer build times.
- Nx introduces task scheduling to optimize parallel builds and test runs, but task execution can become bottlenecked and inefficient due to the overhead of orchestrating hundreds or thousands of tasks, especially in large monorepos.
- Dependency bloat results in increased disk usage, slower git operations, and more complicated dependency management for developers. Updating shared libraries or dependencies becomes a monumental task, leading to longer build times, merge conflicts, and higher risk of bugs.
- In larger teams, the coupling of everything together in a monorepo increases the coordination overhead, slowing down development and causing friction between teams, which may hurt overall productivity.
- CI/CD pipelines in monorepos can become a nightmare due to changes in shared libraries or configurations, triggering the build and test of a large number of projects. In contrast, a polyrepo setup can run pipelines only for the specific project where changes were made, resulting in faster deployments and quicker feedback.
- While Nx and the monorepo approach offer benefits, they can introduce serious performance bottlenecks for large, complex codebases. Build times, scheduling overhead, dependency bloat, and scaling issues are all valid reasons why monorepos might not be the best fit in certain scenarios.
- For smaller projects or tightly integrated systems, a monorepo can be highly effective, but as your codebase and teams grow, the performance penalties may outweigh the benefits. Ultimately, the right approach depends on the size, team structure, and performance needs of your project.
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