workspaces

Working with workspaces

Table of contents

Description

Workspaces is a generic term that refers to the set of features in the npm cli that provides support to managing multiple packages from your local files system from within a singular top-level, root package.

This set of features makes up for a much more streamlined workflow handling linked packages from the local file system. Automating the linking process as part of npm install and avoiding manually having to use npm link in order to add references to packages that should be symlinked into the current node_modules folder.

We also refer to these packages being auto-symlinked during npm install as a single workspace, meaning it’s a nested package within the current local file system that is explicitly defined in the package.json workspaces configuration.

Installing workspaces

Workspaces are usually defined via the workspaces property of the package.json file, e.g:

{
  "name": "my-workspaces-powered-project",
  "workspaces": [
    "workspace-a"
  ]
}

Given the above package.json example living at a current working directory . that contains a folder named workspace-a that disposes of a package.json inside it, defining a nodejs package, e.g:

.
+-- package.json
`-- workspace-a
   `-- package.json

The expected result once running npm install in this current working directory . is that the folder workspace-a will get symlinked to the node_modules folder of the current working dir.

Below is a post npm install example, given that same previous example structure of files and folders:

.
+-- node_modules
|  `-- workspace-a -> ../workspace-a
+-- package-lock.json
+-- package.json
`-- workspace-a
   `-- package.json

Using workspaces

Given the specifities of how Node.js handles module resolution it’s possible to consume any defined workspace by it’s declared package.json name. Continuing from the example defined above, let’s also create a Node.js script that will require the workspace-a example module, e.g:

// ./workspace-a/index.js
module.exports = 'a'

// ./lib/index.js
const moduleA = require('workspace-a')
console.log(moduleA) // -> a

When running it with:

node lib/index.js

This demonstrates how the nature of node_modules resolution allows for workspaces to enable a portable workflow for requiring each workspace in such a way that is also easy to publish these nested workspaces to be consumed elsewhere.

See also