Restructure project npm dependencies

[deepak1556]

As part of #252068 and soon to prepare for npm/cli#8153 we want to move the native module dependencies from the root package.json. But this is also a good time to revisit how our dependencies are shared, today there is a dupe of dependency declarations across remote, web and root. Could we restructure in a way that there is no longer dependencies on the root but something like

vscode
  |
  |-> shared
          |-> package.json (dependencies shared across sub folders and possibly common napi native modules)
          |-> electron
                |-> package.json
                |-> .npmrc
          |-> remote
                |-> package.json
                |-> .npmrc
          |-> web
               |-> package.json
               |-> .npmrc

This could pave option for users building only web target of vscode doesn't have to build the entire module tree of the client.

/cc @bpasero @joaomoreno

[bpasero]

I am not sure about shared to contain dependencies, I would have expected something like deps or whatever is more of a standard term for this.

[tmm1]

Tangential question, but are we committed to npm? #249669

pnpm has a much more robust workspaces feature including catalogs

[tmm1]

The shared/deps proposal makes sense to me, and the changes necessary (outlined in #252068 (comment)) seem straightforward.

Does this mean the toplevel package.json would no longer declare any dependencies? Would the scripts still live there?

[deepak1556]

@tmm1 yup we are committed to npm and don't see it changing anytime soon.

Does this mean the toplevel package.json would no longer declare any dependencies? Would the scripts still live there?

Yup with this structure we shouldn't have any dependencies in the top level package.json. The scripts however should exist there since its an easy entrypoint for the project to run commands.

[bpasero]

@deepak1556 I wonder if this would also be a good time to think about devDependencies in the top level package.json to move into the build folder, so that we end up with no dependencies top level whatsoever.