Nestjs SDL Generation Doesn't Work with Federation

[marc-wilson]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current behavior

The NestJS documentation describes steps for generating GraphQL schemas, but these steps don’t currently work as expected when using GraphQL Federation. The same limitation appears when generating an SDL at runtime, where a workaround is referenced in this pull request.

That pull request has been open for some time, and there have been a few related issues that were closed or locked. I completely understand that maintaining an open-source project involves difficult prioritization decisions, and that not every issue can be addressed immediately. However, given that SDL generation is documented as supported, it would be really helpful to have clearer guidance on the current status of federation support in this area.

At the moment, developers following the official documentation may reasonably expect SDL generation to work with federation, but in practice it does not. Clarifying whether this is a known limitation, a planned feature, or something that is currently blocked would go a long way toward setting the right expectations.

This issue is specifically about build-time SDL generation for federated subgraphs. I’m not referring to runtime generation, where a workaround is already available.

If possible, it would be great to understand:

• What is currently blocking support for federated SDL generation?
• Whether there is a rough timeline or direction for a fix, or if this is not something that can be supported in the near term

If federation support for SDL generation is not currently planned, updating the documentation to reflect that would also be very helpful for the community.

Minimum reproduction code

https://github.com/nestjs/nest/tree/master/sample/31-graphql-federation-code-first

Steps to reproduce

No response

Expected behavior

Build-time SDL generation works as documented when using GraphQL Federation, or the documentation clearly describes the current limitations and supported approaches.