Monorepo – The Magic of One Repo you must know as full stack developer

So nextJS is inveted in 2016 people befefore that

Once Upon a Time, in the Land of Repos…
There was chaos. Developers were running around, managing multiple repositories like juggling fireballs. The frontend was in one repo, backend in another, and libraries were scattered across the kingdom Then, one day developers comes up with solution Monorepo!

Monorepo is like the grand library where all your books (code) are stored in one place. No more running around fetching them from different locations. You simply open one door, and all your projects are neatly tucked in!

What is a Monorepo?

Imagine a castle (repo) with many rooms (folders). Each room has its own purpose:

Frontend: Where the React code lives, playing with cool user interfaces.
Backend: The secret chamber of Node.js where data flows
Shared Components: The royal pantry, stocked with reusable goodies for all the rooms.
All these rooms are part of the same castle (mono repository). You don’t have to go from one castle to another to find what you need—it’s all under one roof!

What’s problem before this?

Traditionally, you might create two separate repositories. one for the frontend and one for the backend. At first, this seems simple. But as the project grows, you run into some annoying problems.

• The frontend repo has its own set of dependencies, pipelines, and code.
• The backend repo is also completely separate, with its own setup.
• You have to manually sync shared code (like authentication logic) between the two repos
• The frontend and backend use similar libraries, but they’re often running different versions

How Monorepo Solves These Problems:

1. All-in-One Repo: Frontend and backend live together in one repo. No more switching, making development smoother.
2. Shared Code Folder: Utility functions are shared between frontend and backend without duplication. Update once, and it’s reflected everywhere. You can Start both parts of the app with one command
3. Unified Dependencies: All packages use the same versions, avoiding compatibility issues.
4. Single CI/CD Pipeline: One pipeline handles the entire app, making deployments and testing faster and error-free.

But wait—how do we manage such a grand castle of projects efficiently?

Enter Lerna, the magical wizard who keeps everything in the castle running smoothly. And that’s where our next blog will come into picture…..

Stay tuned ! 🔔

till then happy coding ! 🫶🏻