How do you separate dependency of frontend and backend in an Nx workspace?

[winston0410]

So I want to share dependencies between packages in frontend and backend, but not having all of them in root. Otherwise when I run the CI when the backend's code has changed, I will have to download the dependencies for frontend as well. Can Nx handle that?

[Cammisuli]

Nx strongly recommends using a single version dependency. That means that your root package.json file should have the dependencies for all your apps/libs.

[Cammisuli]

You can also use a yarn/npm/pnpm/lerna workspace to handle your dependencies instead. Then add Nx to run the tasks: https://nx.dev/migration/adding-to-monorepo

[kasir-barati]

@Cammisuli can you elaborate what you mean by "strongly recommends"? The way I look at it, it's gonna unnecessarily increase the node_modules size installed, unwanted CI/CD pipelines execution, and polluting dependencies.

But I can also empathise what it means to have only one package.json and package-lock.json. It is much much easier to manage and operate with just one rather than having multiple one.

But nonetheless I still like to hear your comments on this.