lerna-link-dep^1.2.0

Like lerna add but does just the symlinking, works on CLI bins too

Install globally, via npm

This is a CLI app so you install it globally, with -g:

npm i -g lerna-link-dep

Then, call it from the command line using one of the following keywords:

deplink
johnnydepp
linkdep

Alternatively, CLI's can also be installed as local dependencies, but you then have to call them through package.json, through npm script.

Trivia

This program has 50 assertions in its unit tests. That's exactly equal to all unit test assertions' median (50) but less than geometric mean (70).

§ Quick Take

lerna add runs a whole chain of actions redundantly validating the packages and calling the internet.

We want the — npm i but for packages within our monorepo!

That's what this CLI does:

deplink "detergent"

That's it. For example, symlink is created at "monorepo-root/packages/object-all-values-equal-to/node_modules/detergent" pointing to "monorepo-root/packages/detergent".

As you expect, package.json is updated, CLI's are linked properly to bin/ and devDeps can be set via a flag:

deplink "detergent" -d
deplink "detergent" --dev

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§ Supports CLI's

If your package ("b" from the example above) is a CLI, symlinks will be put one level deeper, instead of within node_modules, for each entry in bin from package.json, a symlink will be created in node_modules/.bin/, pointing not to the root of the package "b" but straight to the file that bin entry in package.json was pointing to.

For example, lerna-clean-changelogs-cli of ours has the following bin entry in its package.json:

"bin": {
  "lcc": "cli.js",
  "lernacleanchangelog": "cli.js"
}

If you git-cloned our monorepo and wanted to link package lerna-clean-changelogs-cli to another package, two symlinks would be created, one for lcc and another for lernacleanchangelog, both pointing to the same file, cli.js.

PS. If you wonder, what happens if a package is both CLI and normal package (has both "main" and "bin" keys in package.json)? It will still work — both sets of symlinks will be created.

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§ Against `lerna link`

According to lerna link documentation , lerna link "symlinks together all packages that are dependencies of each other". But we want just to symlink one!

By the way, it's not just me, people complain about it at Lerna's issues board here , here and here .

Well, now those days are gone, we have a simple dependency linker at last.

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