monorepo.md

Monorepo

Although release-it was not originally designed for monorepos, certain workflows with multiple workspaces can still be installed.

If all workspaces should be bumped to the same version and are published at the same time, then follow the two steps in this guide.

• A single npm run release to publish each package, finishing with a run for the monorepo root.
• Each package will be published one after another separately.
• The version in each package.json will be bumped.
• All internal packages in dependencies and devDependencies will be bumped to the same version.

There is nothing fancy going on, this works with existing solutions. I did not test this with the conventional-changelog plugin. Currently using this setup myself in the 7-docs monorepo. See this commit that follows this guide.

1. Configure root/monorepo

• Install the bumper plugin: npm install -D @release-it/bumper
• Order the workspaces so a workspace depending on another comes after it. See the examples below.
• Add a release script to run the release script of all workspaces and end with itself.
• Make sure it contains git.requireCleanWorkingDir: false (to include all updated package.json files)
• Make sure to add npm.publish: false here if the root should not be published.
• Add e.g. github.release: true and/or other changelog related tasks to the root config.

Example:

{
  "name": "root-package",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "workspaces": ["packages/a", "packages/b", "packages/c"],
  "scripts": {
    "release": "npm run release --workspaces && release-it"
  },
  "release-it": {
    "git": {
      "requireCleanWorkingDir": false
    }
  }
}

2. Configure each workspace

• Add a "release": "release-it" script to each workspace's package.json.
• Add a release-it config (either to package.json or in .release-it.json)
• Make sure it contains git: false
• Add @release-it/bumper config if it has internal dependencies so these dependencies or devDependencies will be automatically bumped during the release-it process.

Without internal dependencies

Example for a workspace without internal dependencies:

{
  "name": "package-a",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "scripts": {
    "release": "release-it"
  },
  "dependencies": {},
  "release-it": {
    "git": false
  }
}

With internal dependencies

Example for a workspace with internal dependencies:

{
  "name": "package-c",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "scripts": {
    "release": "release-it"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "package-a": "1.0.0"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "package-b": "1.0.0"
  },
  "release-it": {
    "git": false,
    "plugins": {
      "@release-it/bumper": {
        "out": {
          "file": "package.json",
          "path": ["dependencies.package-a", "devDependencies.package-b"]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}