@alexaegis/turbowatch

Holds a configuration for turbowatch to watch local dependencies changing through node_modules.

It will first run buildDependenciesScript, then after that's finished the first time, it will run devScript.

Turbowatch configuration example

apps/my-app/dev.js

import { turbowatchLocalNodeModules } from '@alexaegis/turbowatch';
import { watch } from 'turbowatch';

void (async () => {
  await watch(
    await turbowatchLocalNodeModules({
      buildDependenciesScript: 'build:dependencies',
      devScript: 'dev_',
    }),
  );
})();
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It's using an IIFE because turbowatch does not understand top-level awaits

Turbo example

When using with turbo, it's important that turbo cannot invoke itself. (In older versions of turbo it was allowed but worked wonky, since then it's actively prohibited) So when starting your app, start the invokation from turbowatch

apps/my-app/package.json

{
  "scripts": {
    "build:dependencies": "turbo run build-lib_ --filter my-app",
    "dev": "turbowatch dev.js",
    "dev_": "vite"
  }
}
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And then the interesting part of a turbo.json. For the turbowatch setup specifically, only the build-lib_ task is used. Since turbowatch through the "build:dependencies" npm script already takes care of building the dependencies of the app, there's no need to start the app through turbo. For a more comprehensive turbo.json file, check the one in this package's repository.

turbo.json

{
  "$schema": "https://turborepo.org/schema.json",
  "tasks": {
    "build-app_": {
      "dependsOn": ["^build-lib_"],
      "outputs": ["dist/**"]
    },
    "build-lib_": {
      "dependsOn": ["^build-lib_"],
      "outputs": ["dist/**"]
    },
    "dev_": {
      "cache": false,
      "dependsOn": ["^build-lib_"],
      "persistent": true
    }
  }
}
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I'm using separate build tasks for apps and libs, so I can skip building the app when I'm running turbo run build-lib_ --filter my-app, if they'd use the same script, the app would get built every time a dependency changes.

You then start your app using the "dev" script. You can put one in your root package.json too, but do not forget that you can't use turbo for this!

package.json

{
  "script": {
    "dev": "pnpm run --dir apps/my-app dev"
  }
}
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