[BUG] run transitive dependencies with `--workspace` flag?

[adiun]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current Behavior

I have a monorepo that contains:

- packageA (depends on sharedC)
- packageB
- sharedC (depends on sharedD)
- sharedD

If I run npm run build --workspace [packageA], this only builds packageA and not sharedC or sharedD

Expected Behavior

I migrated from lerna to npm workspaces - in lerna there was a flag --include-filtered-dependencies which would look at the transitive dependencies of packageA and would run those first. So an npm run build --workspace packageA would run the build first on sharedD and then sharedC before running the build on packageA. I expected to find something like this in npm workspaces.

Right now I have to define the workspaces in the right order in the root package.json but that doesn't solve the problem of npm run since I have many packages and only want to run some command (like a build) on a subtree. In CI it seems I have to specify each of the dependent packages and build them in the right order.

Steps To Reproduce

1. In a monorepo environment with a package packageA that has dependencies on a shared package shared and build npm scripts specified for both packageA and shared
2. With npm 7.17 installed
3. Run npm run build --workspace packageA
4. Expect to see shared package build first. Actual: packageA builds - shared never builds.

Environment

• OS: Ubuntu 20.04
• Node: 14.16.0
• npm: 7.17.0

[zackerydev]

This would be a huge advantage of NPM workspaces - right now we are keeping lerna around for running transitive builds one at a time.

[jacobroufa]

I'm looking into a similar issue with some software I'm working on, where I'm scoping to a folder filled with workspaces, e.g. modules/* and dependents are not built prior to the modules that require them. In my research I've come across a few things.

Lerna builds a dependency tree by which to order their operations: see their PackageGraph class.

NPM's install and ci commands use a similar method, with their dependent class Arborist: see the install command.

It seems like one would just have to implement this Arborist in place of the simplified operation taking place to set workspaces.

[ruyadorno]

Hi @adiun thanks for taking the time to bring this up to our attention.

Given that this would be an entire new feature for npm workspaces to support I would recommend you to propose this as either a issue or discussion over at our RFC repo where it can pick up the attention from the community and the rest of the npm cli team.