Monorepo Toolchain: Turborepo + pnpm workspace

As projects split from one package to many, separate repos cause divergent deps, painful code reuse, and fragmented releases. Monorepo solves these with tooling. Turborepo + pnpm delivers the best combination today.

pnpm workspace Dependency Management

Declare apps/* packages/* structure in pnpm-workspace.yaml. Root pnpm install uses hard-links so the same dep is shared across packages with strictly isolated node_modules against phantom dependencies. workspace: protocol references internal packages instantly without publishing.

# pnpm-workspace.yaml
packages:
  - 'apps/*'
  - 'packages/*'
  - 'tooling/*'

# turbo.json
{
  "$schema": "https://turbo.build/schema.json",
  "pipeline": {
    "build": {
      "dependsOn": ["^build"],
      "outputs": [".next/**", "dist/**"],
      "cache": true
    },
    "typecheck": { "dependsOn": ["^build"], "outputs": [] },
    "lint": { "dependsOn": ["^build"], "outputs": [] },
    "test": {
      "dependsOn": ["^build"],
      "outputs": ["coverage/**"],
      "inputs": ["**/*.test.*", "jest.config.*"]
    },
    "dev": { "cache": false, "persistent": true }
  }
}

# root package.json
{
  "name": "my-monorepo",
  "private": true,
  "packageManager": "pnpm@9.0.0",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "turbo build",
    "typecheck": "turbo typecheck",
    "test": "turbo test",
    "dev": "turbo dev",
    "release": "changeset version && changeset publish"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "turbo": "^2.0.0",
    "@changesets/cli": "^2.27.0",
    "typescript": "^5.4.0"
  }
}

# packages/ui/package.json
{
  "name": "@company/ui",
  "version": "1.2.0",
  "type": "module",
  "main": "./dist/index.js",
  "types": "./dist/index.d.ts",
  "exports": {
    ".": { "types": "./dist/index.d.ts", "import": "./dist/index.js" },
    "./styles.css": "./dist/styles.css"
  },
  "sideEffects": false
}

Turborepo Incremental Builds and Caching

turbo.json declares task DAG: child build depends on upstream ^build, topologically sorted automatically. Per-task input hash hits local or remote cache to skip entire builds - CI speedup typically 5-20x.

Best Practices

Standardize internal packages on @scope/pkg naming. Use Changesets for versioning/changelogs. Never cross-package relative imports. Wire remote cache to team S3 bucket so every CI run shares cache globally.