Configuration: project.json and nx.json
There are two main types of configuration in every Nx workspace: project configuration and the global Nx CLI configuration.
Projects can be configured in package.json
(if you use npm scripts and not Nx executors) and project.json
(if you
use Nx executors). Both package.json
and project.json
files are located in each project's folder. Nx merges the two
files to get each project's configuration. This guide covers the project.json
case.
Angular developers can also configure projects in angular.json. Read this guide for more information.
Project Configuration
The project.json
file contains configuration specific to its project. This file is often created when you use Nx
Plugins. It configures custom executors, which are used instead of npm scripts. Custom executors are typed, toolable and provide a
lot more flexibility for running long-live processes. They are also more composable.
If you're satisfied with npm scripts though, you will never see a project.json
file in your workspace. But we encourage
you to explore Nx Plugins and the power they bring.
Let's look at the following project.json
:
1{
2 "root": "libs/mylib/",
3 "sourceRoot": "libs/mylib/src",
4 "projectType": "library",
5 "targets": {
6 "test": {
7 "executor": "@nrwl/jest:jest",
8 "outputs": [],
9 "dependsOn": ["build"],
10 "options": {
11 "jestConfig": "libs/mylib/jest.config.js",
12 "tsConfig": "libs/mylib/tsconfig.spec.json"
13 }
14 },
15 "build": {
16 "executor": "@nrwl/js:tsc",
17 "outputs": ["dist/libs/mylib"],
18 "dependsOn": ["^build"],
19 "options": {
20 "tsConfig": "libs/mylib/tsconfig.lib.json",
21 "main": "libs/mylib/src/main.ts"
22 },
23 "configurations": {
24 "production": {
25 "tsConfig": "libs/mylib/tsconfig-prod.lib.json"
26 }
27 }
28 }
29 },
30 "tags": ["scope:myteam"],
31 "implicitDependencies": ["anotherlib"]
32}
root
tells Nx the location of the library including its sources and configuration files.sourceRoot
tells Nx the location of the library's source files.projectType
is either 'application' or 'library'. The project type is used in project graph viz and in a few aux commands.
Targets
Let's look at a sample test target:
1{
2 "test": {
3 "executor": "@nrwl/jest:jest",
4 "outputs": [],
5 "dependsOn": ["build"],
6 "options": {
7 "jestConfig": "libs/mylib/jest.config.js",
8 "tsConfig": "libs/mylib/tsconfig.spec.json"
9 }
10 }
11}
Target Name
The name of the target test
means that you can invoke it as follows: nx test mylib
or nx run mylib:test
. The name
isn't significant in any other way. If you rename it to, for example, mytest
, you will be able to run as
follows: nx mytest mylib
or nx run mylib:mytest
.
Executor
The executor
property tells Nx what function to invoke when you run the target. "@nrwl/jest:jest"
tells Nx to find
the @nrwl/jest
package, find the executor named jest
and invoke it with the options.
Options
The options
provides a map of values that will be passed to the executor. The provided command line args will be
merged into this map. I.e., nx test mylib --jestConfig=libs/mylib/another-jest.config.js
will pass the following to
the executor:
1{
2 "jestConfig": "libs/mylib/another-jest.config.js",
3 "tsConfig": "libs/mylib/tsconfig.spec.json"
4}
Configurations
The configurations
property provides extra sets of values that will be merged into the options map.
1{
2 "build": {
3 "executor": "@nrwl/js:tsc",
4 "outputs": ["dist/libs/mylib"],
5 "dependsOn": ["^build"],
6 "options": {
7 "tsConfig": "libs/mylib/tsconfig.lib.json",
8 "main": "libs/mylib/src/main.ts"
9 },
10 "configurations": {
11 "production": {
12 "tsConfig": "libs/mylib/tsconfig-prod.lib.json"
13 }
14 }
15 }
16}
You can select a configuration like this: nx build mylib --configuration=production
or nx run mylib:build:configuration=production
.
The following code snippet shows how the executor options get constructed:
1require(`@nrwl/jest`).executors['jest']({
2 ...options,
3 ...selectedConfiguration,
4 ...commandLineArgs,
5}); // Pseudocode
The selected configuration adds/overrides the default options, and the provided command line args add/override the configuration options.
Outputs
"outputs": ["dist/libs/mylib"]
tells Nx where the build
target is going to create file artifacts. The provided value
is actually the default, so we can omit it in this case. "outputs": []
tells Nx that the test
target doesn't create
any artifacts on disk.
dependsOn
Targets can depend on other targets. This is the relevant portion of the configuration file:
1"build": {
2 "dependsOn": ["^build"]
3},
4"test": {
5 "dependsOn": ["build"]
6}
A common scenario is having to build dependencies of a project first before building the project. This is what
the "dependsOn": ["^build"]
property of the build
target configures. It tells Nx that before it can build mylib
it needs to make
sure that mylib
's dependencies are built as well. This doesn't mean Nx is going to rerun those builds. If the right
artifacts are already in the right place, Nx will do nothing. If they aren't in the right place, but they are available
in the cache, Nx will retrieve them from the cache.
Another common scenario is for a target to depend on another target of the same project. For instance, "dependsOn": ["build"]
of
the test
target tells Nx that before it can test mylib
it needs to make sure that mylib
is built, which will
result in mylib
's dependencies being built as well.
You can also express the same configuration using
1"build": {
2 "dependsOn": [{ projects: "dependencies", target: "build"}]
3},
4"test": {
5 "dependsOn": [{ projects: "self", target: "build"}]
6}
This configuration is usually not needed. Nx comes with reasonable defaults (imported in nx.json
) which implement the
configuration above.
tags
You can annotate your projects with tags
as follows:
1{
2 "tags": ["scope:myteam"]
3}
You can configure lint rules using these tags to, for instance, ensure that libraries belonging to myteam
are not depended on by libraries belong to theirteam
.
implicitDependencies
Nx uses powerful source-code analysis to figure out your workspace's project graph. Some dependencies cannot be deduced statically, so you can set them manually like this:
1{
2 "root": "libs/mylib/",
3 "sourceRoot": "libs/mylib/src",
4 "projectType": "library",
5 "targets": {},
6 "implicitDependencies": ["anotherlib"]
7}
You can also remove a dependency as follows:
1{
2 "root": "libs/mylib/",
3 "sourceRoot": "libs/mylib/src",
4 "projectType": "library",
5 "targets": {},
6 "implicitDependencies": ["!anotherlib"] # regardless of what Nx thinks, "mylib" doesn't depend on "anotherlib"
7}
workspace json
The workspace.json
file in the root directory is optional. It's used if you want to list the projects in your workspace explicitly instead of Nx scanning the file tree for all project.json
and package.json
files.
1{
2 "version": 2,
3 "projects": {
4 "myapp": "apps/myapp"
5 }
6}
"version": 2
tells Nx that we are using Nx's format for theworkspace.json
file.projects
is a map of project names to their locations.
You could inline project.json
files into workspace.json
. This used to be the default, but it's no longer
recommended. If you have an existing workspace where the configuration is inlined,
run nx g convert-to-nx-project --all
.
If you have an old workspace where the configuration version is set to 1, change the version number to 2 and
run nx format
.
CLI Configuration
The nx.json
file configures the Nx CLI and project defaults.
The following is an expanded version showing all options. Your nx.json
will likely be much shorter.
1{
2 "npmScope": "happyorg",
3 "affected": {
4 "defaultBase": "main"
5 },
6 "workspaceLayout": {
7 "appsDir": "demos",
8 "libsDir": "packages"
9 },
10 "implicitDependencies": {
11 "workspace.json": "*",
12 "package.json": {
13 "dependencies": "*",
14 "devDependencies": "*"
15 },
16 "tsconfig.base.json": "*",
17 "nx.json": "*"
18 },
19 "targetDefaults": {
20 "build": {
21 "dependsOn": ["^build"]
22 }
23 },
24 "cli": {
25 "defaultCollection": "@nrwl/js"
26 },
27 "generators": {
28 "@nrwl/js:library": {
29 "buildable": true
30 }
31 },
32 "tasksRunnerOptions": {
33 "default": {
34 "runner": "nx/tasks-runners/default",
35 "options": {
36 "cacheableOperations": ["build", "lint", "test", "e2e"]
37 }
38 }
39 }
40}
NPM Scope
Tells Nx what prefix to use when generating library imports.
Affected
Tells Nx which branch and HEAD to use when calculating affected projects.
defaultBase
defines the default base branch, defaulted tomain
.
Workspace Layout
You can add a workspaceLayout
property to modify where libraries and apps are located.
1{
2 "workspaceLayout": {
3 "appsDir": "demos",
4 "libsDir": "packages"
5 }
6}
These settings would store apps in /demos/
and libraries in /packages/
. The paths specified are relative to the
workspace root.
Files & Implicit Dependencies
Nx performs advanced source-code analysis to figure out the project graph of the workspace. So when you make a change,
Nx can deduce what can be broken by this change. Some dependencies between projects and shared files cannot be inferred
statically. You can configure those using implicitDependencies
.
1{
2 "implicitDependencies": {
3 "workspace.json": "*",
4 "package.json": {
5 "dependencies": "*",
6 "devDependencies": {
7 "mypackage": ["mylib"]
8 },
9 "scripts": {
10 "check:*": "*"
11 }
12 },
13 "globalFile": ["myapp"],
14 "styles/**/*.css": ["myapp"]
15 }
16}
In the example above:
- Changing
workspace.json
affects every project. - Changing the
dependencies
property inpackage.json
affects every project. - Changing the
mypackage
property inpackage.json
only affectsmylib
. - Changing any of the custom check
scripts
inpackage.json
affects every project. - Changing
globalFile
only affectsmyapp
. - Changing any CSS file inside the
styles
directory only affectsmyapp
.
Target Defaults
Targets can depend on other targets. A common scenario is having to build dependencies of a project first before
building the project. The dependsOn
property in project.json
can be used to define the list of dependencies of an
individual target.
Often the same dependsOn
configuration has to be defined for every project in the repo, and that's when
defining targetDefaults
in nx.json
is helpful.
1{
2 "targetDefaults": {
3 "build": {
4 "dependsOn": ["^build"]
5 }
6 }
7}
The configuration above is identical to adding {"dependsOn": ["^build"]}
to every build target of every project.
Another target default you can configure is outputs
:
1{
2 "targetDefaults": {
3 "build": {
4 "outputs": ["./custom-dist"]
5 }
6 }
7}
CLI Options
The following command generates a new library: nx g @nrwl/js:lib mylib
. After setting the defaultCollection
property,
the lib is generated without mentioning the collection name: nx g lib mylib
.
1{
2 "cli": {
3 "defaultCollection": "@nrwl/js"
4 }
5}
Generators
Default generator options are configured in nx.json
as well. For instance, the following tells Nx to always
pass --buildable=true
when creating new libraries.
1{
2 "generators": {
3 "@nrwl/js:library": {
4 "buildable": true
5 }
6 }
7}
Tasks Runner Options
A task is an invocation of a target.
Tasks runners are invoked when you run nx test
, nx build
, nx run-many
, nx affected
, and so on. The tasks runner
named "default" is used by default. Specify a different one like this nx run-many --target=build --all --runner=another
.
Tasks runners can accept different options. The following are the options supported
by "nx/tasks-runners/default"
and "@nrwl/nx-cloud"
.
cacheableOperations
defines the list of targets/operations that are cached by Nx.parallel
defines the max number of targets ran in parallel (in older versions of Nx you had to pass--parallel --maxParallel=3
instead of--parallel=3
).captureStderr
defines whether the cache captures stderr or just stdout.skipNxCache
defines whether the Nx Cache should be skipped. Defaults tofalse
.cacheDirectory
defines where the local cache is stored, which isnode_modules/.cache/nx
by default.encryptionKey
(when using"@nrwl/nx-cloud"
only) defines an encryption key to support end-to-end encryption of your cloud cache. You may also provide an environment variable with the keyNX_CLOUD_ENCRYPTION_KEY
that contains an encryption key as its value. The Nx Cloud task runner normalizes the key length, so any length of key is acceptable.runtimeCacheInputs
defines the list of commands that are run by the runner to include into the computation hash value.selectivelyHashTsConfig
only hash the path mapping of the active project in thetsconfig.base.json
(e.g., adding/removing projects doesn't affect the hash of existing projects). Defaults tofalse
runtimeCacheInputs
are set as follows:
1{
2 "tasksRunnerOptions": {
3 "default": {
4 "runner": "nx/tasks-runners/default",
5 "options": {
6 "cacheableOperations": ["build", "lint", "test", "e2e"],
7 "runtimeCacheInputs": ["node -v"]
8 }
9 }
10 }
11}
You can configure parallel
in nx.json
, but you can also pass them in the
terminal nx run-many --target=test --parallel=5
.
.nxignore
You may optionally add an .nxignore
file to the root. This file is used to specify files in your workspace that should
be completely ignored by Nx.
The syntax is the same as
a .gitignore
file.
When a file is specified in the .nxignore
file:
- Changes to that file are not taken into account in the
affected
calculations. - Even if the file is outside an app or library,
nx workspace-lint
won't warn about it.
Validating the configuration
If at any point in time you want to check if your configuration is in sync, you can use the workspace-lint executor:
nx workspace-lint
This will identify any projects with no files in the configured project root folder, as well as any file that's not part of any project configured in the workspace.