PR: Improve Registry Path Handling in Monorepo Environments

🛠️ Changes Summary

• replace inline original file creation with createRegistryFile utility
• added Type alias RegistryItemFile of registryItemFileSchema

Reason

• upcoming case handling change under if (!stats.isFile()) { of recursivelyResolveFileImports will reuse createRegistryFile.

PR roadmap introduces several refactors and new utility functions to improve how the shadcn registry:build CLI handles failed aliased import paths, especially in monorepo setups using path aliases (e.g. @/components/...).

🐛 Problem

In monorepos, adding a registry component like:

{
  "files": [
    {
      "path": "@/components/rhf/rhf-text-field.tsx",
      "type": "registry:component"
    }
  ]
}

...and running:

pnpm shadcn registry:build

Would fail with:

ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat '/absolute/path/to/ui/apps/registry/@/components/ui/rhf/rhf-text-field.tsx'

fs.stat() is called before the alias is resolved by tsconfig-paths, causing the CLI to crash ungracefully.

💡 Why This Happens

In a monorepo, files from multiple workspaces may be referenced using aliases (@, @ui, etc.). If these aliases aren't fully resolved to disk paths, the CLI crashes when trying to access them directly via fs.stat.

The current logic fails here:

// packages/shadcn/src/registry/utils.ts
const stat = await fs.stat(resolvedFilePath);
if (!stat.isFile()) {
  // Optionally log or handle this case
  return { dependencies: [], files: [] };
}

When fs.stat() is called on an invalid or unresolved path, it throws an ENOENT error, causing the CLI to crash ungracefully.

🧭 Roadmap

part of a multi step effort to enable the registry CLI to handle path aliases gracefully in monorepo environments.

• Refactor: – move determineFileType() to its own file (utils/registry/determine-file-type.ts) 🚀 (awaiting merge refactor(registry/utils): move determineFileType to determine-file-type.ts #8299)
• Refactor: – add createRegistryFile() util for creating registry file shape ✅ (this PR)
• Refactor: – add getStatsOrNonFile() to gracefully suppress ENOENT errors
• Refactor: – add retryAlternativePath() to retry common alias misresolves
• Feature: – inject fallback logic into !stat.isFile() and handle returned suppressed files in registry build command's resolveRegistryItems
• Feature – add warning/logging system for invalid file paths (follow-up)

Each change is isolated for clean diffs.

🧱 Directory Structure (for Context)

my monorepo structure to understand the issue:

./
├── apps/registry/ # registry
│   ├── components.json, package.json, registry.json
│   ├── public/r/ → registry.json, rhf-text-field.json, theme.json
│   └── src/
│       ├── app/
│       │   ├── (registry)/
│       │   └── demo/[name]/ → components/rhf-text-field.tsx, ui/ # demo
│       ├── components/ → registry/, rhf-text-field.tsx # example
│       ├── content/, hooks/, layouts/
│       └── lib/ → highlight-code.ts, products.ts, registry.ts, utils.ts
│       ├── tsconfig.json, tsconfig.tsbuildinfo
├── package.json
├── packages/
│   ├── eslint-config/, hooks/, typescript-config/
│   ├── shadcn-ui/ # shadcn-ui repo
│   │   ├── components.json, package.json, tsconfig.json
│   │   └── src/
│   │       ├── components/ui/ → button.tsx, form.tsx, input.tsx, label.tsx
│   │       ├── hooks/, lib/utils.ts, styles/globals.css
│   ├── shadcn-ui-extended/ # extended component repo `rhf-text-field.tsx`
│   │   ├── package.json, tsconfig.json
│   │   └── src/
│   │       ├── components/ → rhf/rhf-text-field.tsx, ui/
│   │       └── data/, helpers/, hooks/, lib/, utils/
│   └── ui/turbo/generators/
└── pnpm-lock.yaml, pnpm-workspace.yaml, turbo.json

tsconfig.json

    "paths": {
      // ...
      "@/components/ui/*": [
        "../../packages/shadcn-ui/src/components/ui/*", // primary: shadcn-ui package
        "src/components/ui/*" // fallback: local overrides
      ],

      "@/components/rhf/*": [
        "../../packages/shadcn-ui-extended/src/components/rhf/*", // shadcn-ui-extended
        "src/components/rhf/*" // local overrides
      ],
    }

📚 Notes

• tsconfig-paths is used, but current fs.stat() happens before alias resolution in some cases.
• roadmap feat provides resilience without adding external dependencies or needing a separate alias parser (yet).

🔗 Follow-Ups

• Log warnings for files that fail even after retry fallback