Using Nx Core Without Plugins
The core of Nx is generic, simple, and unobtrusive. Nx plugins, although very useful for many projects, are completely optional. Most large Nx workspaces use plugins for some things and don't use plugins for others.
This guide will walk you through creating a simple Nx workspace with no plugins. It will help you see what capabilities of Nx are completely generic and can be used with any technology or tool.
Using Nx Core
Creating a New Workspace
Running npx create-nx-workspace@latest --preset=core
creates an empty workspace.
This is what is generated:
packages/
nx.json
workspace.json
tsconfig.base.json
package.json
package.json
contains Nx packages.
1{
2 "name": "myorg",
3 "version": "0.0.0",
4 "license": "MIT",
5 "scripts": {},
6 "private": true,
7 "devDependencies": {
8 "nx": "12.8.0",
9 "@nrwl/workspace": "12.8.0",
10 "@types/node": "14.14.33",
11 "typescript": "~4.3.5"
12 }
13}
nx.json
contains the Nx CLI configuration.
1{
2 "extends": "@nrwl/workspace/presets/core.json",
3 "npmScope": "myorg",
4 "tasksRunnerOptions": {
5 "default": {
6 "runner": "@nrwl/workspace/tasks-runners",
7 "options": {
8 "cacheableOperations": ["build", "lint", "test", "e2e"]
9 }
10 }
11 }
12}
Creating an NPM Package
Running nx g npm-package simple
results in:
packages/
simple/
index.js
package.json
nx.json
workspace.json
tsconfig.base.json
package.json
The generated simple/package.json
:
1{
2 "name": "@myorg/simple",
3 "version": "1.0.0",
4 "scripts": {
5 "test": "node index.js"
6 }
7}
With this you can invoke any script defined in packages/simple/package.json
via Nx. For instance, you can invoke the test
script by running nx test simple
. And if you invoke this command a second time, the results are retrieved from
cache.
In this example, we used a generator to create the package, but you could have also created it by hand or copied it from another project.
Creating Second NPM Package and Enabling Yarn Workspaces
Running nx g npm-package complex
results in:
packages/
simple/
index.js
package.json
complex/
index.js
package.json
nx.json
workspace.json
tsconfig.base.json
package.json
Now let's modify packages/complex/index.js
to include require('@myorg/simple')
. If you run nx test complex
,
you will see an error saying that @myorg/simple
cannot be resolved.
This is expected. Nx analyzes your source to enable computation caching, it knows what projects are affected by your PR, but it does not change how your npm scripts run. Whatever tools you use in your npm scripts will run exactly as they would without Nx. Nx Core doesn't replace your tools and doesn't change how they work.
In this simple setup, Nx doesn't do any automated path mapping as it usually does, but rather fully relies on a corresponding yarn
or npm
workspaces setup. As such, at the root-level package.json
you should have something like:
1{
2 ...
3 "workspaces": [
4 "packages/*"
5 ]
6}
Moreover, a dependency from complex
to simple
in packages/complex/package.json
needs to be added:
1{
2 "name": "@myorg/complex",
3 "version": "1.0.0",
4 "scripts": {
5 "test": "node index.js"
6 },
7 "dependencies": {
8 "@myorg/simple": "*"
9 }
10}
Finally, run yarn install
or npm install
to make the package available in the yarn/npm workspace.
Running nx test complex
should work now.
Using Yarn/PNPM/Lerna
This example uses Yarn to connect the two packages. Most of the time, however, there are better ways to do it. The React,
Node and Angular plugins for Nx allow different projects in your workspace to import each other without having to maintain
cumbersome package.json
files. Instead, they use Webpack, Rollup and Jest plugins to enable this use case in a more
elegant way. Read about the relationship between Nx and Yarn/Lerna/PNPM.
What Nx Core Provides
Nx Understands How Your Workspace Is Structured
If you run nx graph
you will see that complex
has a dependency on simple
. Any change to simple
will
invalidate the computation cache for complex
, but changes to complex
won't invalidate the cache for simple
.
In contrast to more basic monorepo tools, Nx doesn't just analyze package.json
files. It does much more. Nx also knows
that adding a require()
creates a dependency and that some dependencies cannot even be expressed in the source code.
Nx Orchestrates Tasks
Running nx run-many --target=test --all
will test all projects in parallel.
Often, tests for different projects can run independently, but builds can't. If you, say, have two applications app1
and app2
depending on the shared-components
library, it's possible that the library has to be built first before the two applications can be built. And that's what nx run-many --target=build --projects=app1,app2
will do.
With Nx, you never have to worry about preparing your workspace before running a particular command. Nx will do it for you.
Nx Knows What Is Affected
Running nx affected --target=test
will test all the projects affected by the current PR.
Nx Caches and Distributes Tasks
Running nx run-many --target=build --all
will cache the file artifacts and the terminal output, so if you run it again the command
will execute instantly because the results will be retrieved from cache. If you use Nx Cloud
the cache will be shared
between you, your teammates, and the CI agents. Nx can also distribute tasks across multiple machines while preserving
the developer experience of running it on a single machine.
This works because Nx's computation caching and distributed task execution work on the process level. It doesn't matter
what build
means. It can be an npm script, a custom Nx executor, a Gradle task. Nx will handle it in the same way.
Adding Plugins
As you can see, the core of Nx is generic, simple, and unobtrusive. Nx Plugins are completely optional, but they can really level up your developer experience. Watch this video to see the plugins in action.