Monorepo: A Thorny Path to Developer Productivity

This article explores the challenges and opportunities of building and maintaining a monorepo. The author cautions against blindly following the success stories of large tech companies, emphasizing that a monorepo isn't a silver bullet. Success hinges on clearly defined goals, such as improved code consistency, organizational coherence, and shared tooling efficiency. The article details optimization strategies for source control (limitations of git and alternatives), build systems (prioritizing single-language strategies), testing (O(change) not O(repo)), and CI/CD workflows within a monorepo environment. The author stresses the importance of carefully handling generated code and the asynchronous nature of service deployments to avoid incidents stemming from the illusion of atomic commits. Ultimately, the author argues that while challenging, the benefits of a well-maintained monorepo are worthwhile if the organization is committed to continuous tool and process improvement.