NX

DANGER

I experienced some issues with gradle tasks in NX.

In particular, flaky tasks happened randomly, sometimes breaking CI

(The gradle task failed, but succeded on the second run).

Wasn't able to pinpoint the issue, needs more investigation.

Some info about NX in this project.

Configuration

In the root nx.json, added base caching for common tasks

"targetDefaults": {
  "lint": {
    "cache": true
  },
  "fix": {
    "cache": true
  },
  "test": {
    "cache": true
  },
  "build": {
    "cache": true
  },
  ...
}

Common Tasks

In order to allow running common tasks across all the projects in the repo like nx run-many -t lint every project must provide a task from its project.json file.

Some tasks are implicit:

• task test is automatically provided by the @nrwl/jest plugin if a project has a `jest.config`` file in it
• gradle tasks are automatically provided by the @nx/gradle plugin

As with every other task, we can override the base command or provide it if it's not present.

{
  "name": "smispi",
  "$schema": "../../node_modules/nx/schemas/project-schema.json",
  "root": "libs/smispi",
  "projectType": "library",
  "targets": {
    "lint": {
      "executor": "nx:run-commands",
      "options": {
        "command": "./gradlew :libs:smispi:check"
      }
    },
    "fix": {
      "executor": "nx:run-commands",
      "options": {
        "command": "./gradlew :libs:smispi:fix"
      }
    },
  }
}

Cache

Further caching improvements can be made by modifying the nx.json file or specifying additional configs to project.json files.

WARNING

Caching is fragile and can lead to unexpected results like outdated dependencies and artifacts.

Make sure to configure it propery and test it thoroughly.

Refer to documentation for more info.

• https://nx.dev/concepts/how-caching-works
• https://nx.dev/features/cache-task-results

Depends on and implicit dependencies

The dependsOn property in the project.json file allows us to specify which other commands must be run before a specific task is executed.

{
  "name": "jakarta-base-rest",
  "$schema": "../../node_modules/nx/schemas/project-schema.json",
  "root": "libs/jakarta-base-rest",
  "projectType": "library",
  "targets": {
    "prepare-env": {
      "executor": "nx:run-commands",
      "options": {
        "command": "mkdir -p dist/libs/jakarta-base-rest"
      }
    },
    "build": {
      "dependsOn": ["prepare-env"],
      "executor": "nx:run-commands",
      "options": {
        "command": "./gradlew :libs:jakarta-base-rest:buildWar && cp libs/jakarta-base-rest/build/libs/jakarta-base-rest.war dist/libs/jakarta-base-rest/"
      }
    },
  }
}

---

TIP

dependsOn can be a task from another project in the repo.

{
  "name": "jakarta-base-rest-e2e",
  "$schema": "../../node_modules/nx/schemas/project-schema.json",
  "root": "libs/jakarta-base-rest-e2e",
  "implicitDependencies": ["jakarta-base-rest"],
  "projectType": "library",
  "targets": {
    "e2e": {
      "executor": "@nx/jest:jest",
      "outputs": ["{workspaceRoot}/coverage/{e2eProjectRoot}"],
      "options": {
        "jestConfig": "libs/jakarta-base-rest-e2e/jest.config.ts",
        "passWithNoTests": true
      },
      "dependsOn": ["jakarta-base-rest:build"]
    },
  }
}

---

The implicitDependencies property in the project.json file allows us to specify manually which project is linked as a dependency to the current target.

This allows nx affected to work correctly.

{
  "name": "jakarta-base-rest-e2e",
  "$schema": "../../node_modules/nx/schemas/project-schema.json",
  "root": "libs/jakarta-base-rest-e2e",
  "implicitDependencies": ["jakarta-base-rest"],
  "projectType": "library",
  "targets": {
   ...
  }
}

Release

Nx, as reported in the documentation, provides 3 commands to release a project:

• nx release version
• nx release changelog
• nx release publish

and a fourth command to automate the whole process:

• nx release

The configuration for the release is in the nx.json file:

  "release": {
    "projects": ["*", "!*-e2e", "root"],
    "version": {
      "conventionalCommits": true
    },
    "changelog": {
      "workspaceChangelog": {
        "file": false,
        "createRelease": "github"
      },
      "projectChangelogs": {
        "renderOptions": {
          "authors": true,
          "commitReferences": true,
          "versionTitleDate": true
        }
      }
    }
  }

nx release publish has as default behavior npm publish for all the projects in the repo with a package.json file containing private: false.

We can override this behavior in the project project.json file:

{
  "name": "smispi",
  "$schema": "../../node_modules/nx/schemas/project-schema.json",
  "root": "libs/smispi",
  "projectType": "library",
  "targets": {
    "nx-release-publish": {
      "command": "./gradlew :libs:smispi:publishAndReleaseToMavenCentral --no-configuration-cache"
    }
  }
}