Why Monorepo Beats Multirepo for Large Frontend Projects

What is Monorepo?

Monorepo is a single repository that holds multiple packages or modules, allowing unified version control, dependency management, and build processes.

Why Switch from Multirepo to Monorepo?

As projects grow, multirepo leads to duplicated dependencies, slower builds, and complex version coordination. Monorepo reduces disk usage, speeds up builds, and simplifies code sharing.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Pros: lower build time, easier code visibility, unified CI/CD, parallel builds.

Cons: large repository size can affect Git performance, permission granularity is limited, and initial migration effort.

Case Study: Tianmao Campus POS

The POS system had over 100 npm modules, slow builds (70‑90 s per package) and fragmented release processes. After adopting a monorepo with pnpm, lerna‑lite and turborepo, build time dropped by 90 %, startup time halved, and release efficiency improved by 80 %.

Toolchain Selection

We chose pnpm for fast, disk‑saving installations, lerna‑lite for versioning and publishing, and turborepo for incremental caching and parallel builds.

Configuration Highlights

{
  "packages": ["packages/*/*"],
  "version": "independent",
  "npmClient": "pnpm"
}

pnpm workspace is defined in pnpm-workspace.yaml and Turborepo pipeline in turbo.json.

Component Integration Workflow

Copy component code into packages/components and remove its .git folder.

Ensure build script uses gulp build.

Run pnpm i at the monorepo root.

Use the provided CLI to link local components via webpack alias without manual npm link.

Conclusion

Monorepo provides a scalable solution for large frontend codebases, delivering significant efficiency gains while maintaining flexibility for future growth.