Share node_modules between PCF projects

[Chan_HY_98]

Hi all. I am new to code component development for PowerApps and found that for every project created using pac pcf init, a folder of Node modules are installed. The node_modules folder is 160+ MB in size too. Therefore, I want to share the modules between 2 projects to reduce the size of each project folder and streamline the development process.

I tried the following directory structure while removing the node_modules and duplicated files from each project folder:

Root
/Project_1
/Project_2
/node_modules
/package.json
/package-lock.json
/pcfconfig.json
/tsconfig.json

When executing npm start watch from Project_1 directory, the components from both Project_1 and Project_2 are compiled together and only the first compiled component is launched in the local server.

Is it possible for multiple PCF projects to share a node_modules folder? If so, is there a way to only run a selected component?

Hope to hear from the community and the pros. Thank you in advance.

[marchello · Accepted solution]

Hi,

What I did was, I created a monorepo with pnpm. This way the node_modules are not duplicated and I can also share components between my PCF projects. You can launch and build the projects separately as you wish.

I also added Turborepo on top of everthing else, so when I build my PCF Solution only the modified projects are built, the rest are cached, so the build times are much shorter.

[Chan_HY_98]

Hi @marchello. Thank you very much for your suggestion. I read up about monorepo and pnpm, and I have implemented them in my workspace with Nx as my monorepo support.