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Scaling your monorepo for large development teams

Greg Foster
Greg Foster
Graphite software engineer
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As your development team grows, managing your monorepo becomes increasingly complex. A monorepo strategy offers unified code management, but scaling it for large teams introduces challenges such as build performance, dependency management, and code ownership. This guide explores effective strategies and tools to scale your monorepo, ensuring efficient collaboration and streamlined workflows.

Adopting a monorepo can provide several advantages for large teams:

  • Unified versioning: Maintain a single version across all projects, simplifying dependency management.

  • Atomic commits: Implement changes across multiple projects simultaneously, reducing integration issues.

  • Improved collaboration: Facilitate cross-team visibility and code sharing, enhancing overall productivity.

  • Simplified tooling: Standardize build, test, and deployment processes across the organization.

For example, companies like Google and Facebook have successfully implemented monorepos to manage vast codebases efficiently.

While monorepos offer numerous benefits, scaling them for large teams presents specific challenges:

  • Build performance: As the codebase grows, build times can increase, affecting developer productivity.

  • Dependency management: Managing dependencies across multiple projects requires careful coordination to avoid conflicts.

  • Code ownership: Defining clear ownership becomes crucial to prevent overlapping responsibilities and maintain code quality.

  • Access control: Ensuring appropriate access levels for different teams can be complex in a shared repository.

Utilize selective builds to compile only the parts of the codebase affected by recent changes. Tools like Buildkite support dynamic pipelines, allowing for efficient build processes.

Leverage Git's sparse checkout feature to allow developers to clone only necessary parts of the repository, reducing local storage requirements and improving performance.

Use CODEOWNERS files to specify responsible individuals or teams for specific parts of the codebase. This practice ensures accountability and streamlines the review process.

Centralize dependency definitions to maintain consistency across projects. Tools like Lerna can assist in managing JavaScript project dependencies effectively.

Graphite offers a suite of tools designed to address monorepo challenges:

  • Stacked pull requests: Break down large changes into smaller, manageable pull requests, facilitating incremental development and easier code reviews.

  • Enhanced Git workflows with Graphite CLI: The Graphite CLI simplifies complex Git operations, enabling developers to create, submit, and manage stacked pull requests efficiently.

  • Merge Queue: Automate the rebasing and merging process to reduce merge conflicts and maintain a green main branch. The Graphite Merge Queue is particularly effective for teams utilizing stacked pull requests, as it ensures dependent changes are merged together and eliminates redundant CI test runs, keeping code changes flowing smoothly.

By integrating Graphite into your development workflow, you can mitigate common monorepo challenges and enhance team collaboration.

Scaling a monorepo for large development teams involves addressing build performance, dependency management, and code ownership challenges. By implementing selective builds, adopting sparse checkouts, defining clear code ownership, and standardizing dependencies, teams can maintain an efficient and collaborative development environment. Leveraging tools like Graphite further streamlines monorepo management, ensuring scalability and productivity as your organization grows.

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