GROWI Monorepo Overview

GROWI is a team collaboration wiki platform built as a monorepo using pnpm workspace + Turborepo.

Monorepo Structure

growi/
├── apps/                    # Applications
│   ├── app/                # Main GROWI application (Next.js + Express + MongoDB)
│   ├── pdf-converter/      # PDF conversion microservice (Ts.ED + Puppeteer)
│   └── slackbot-proxy/     # Slack integration proxy (Ts.ED + TypeORM + MySQL)
├── packages/               # Shared libraries
│   ├── core/              # Core utilities and shared logic
│   ├── core-styles/       # Common styles (SCSS)
│   ├── editor/            # Markdown editor components
│   ├── ui/                # UI component library
│   ├── pluginkit/         # Plugin framework
│   ├── slack/             # Slack integration utilities
│   ├── presentation/      # Presentation mode
│   ├── pdf-converter-client/ # PDF converter client library
│   └── remark-*/          # Markdown plugins (remark-lsx, remark-drawio, etc.)
└── Configuration files
    ├── pnpm-workspace.yaml
    ├── turbo.json
    ├── package.json
    └── .changeset/

Workspace Management

pnpm Workspace

All packages are managed via pnpm workspace. Package references use the workspace: protocol:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "@growi/core": "workspace:^",
    "@growi/ui": "workspace:^"
  }
}

Turborepo Orchestration

Turborepo handles task orchestration with caching and parallelization:

# Run tasks across all workspaces
turbo run dev
turbo run test
turbo run lint
turbo run build

# Filter to specific package
turbo run test --filter @growi/app
turbo run lint --filter @growi/core

Build Order Management

Build dependencies in this monorepo are not declared with dependsOn: ["^build"] (the automatic workspace-dependency mode). Instead, they are declared explicitly — either in the root turbo.json for legacy entries, or in per-package turbo.json files for newer packages.

When to update: whenever a package gains a new workspace dependency on another buildable package (one that produces a dist/), declare the build-order dependency explicitly. Without it, Turborepo may build in the wrong order, causing missing dist/ files or type errors.

Pattern — per-package turbo.json (preferred for new dependencies):

// packages/my-package/turbo.json
{
  "extends": ["//"],
  "tasks": {
    "build": { "dependsOn": ["@growi/some-dep#build"] },
    "dev":   { "dependsOn": ["@growi/some-dep#dev"] }
  }
}

"extends": ["//"] inherits all root task definitions; only add the extra dependsOn
Keep root turbo.json clean — package-level overrides live with the package that owns the dependency
For packages with multiple tasks (watch, lint, test), mirror the dependency in each relevant task

Existing examples:

packages/slack/turbo.json — build/dev depend on @growi/logger
packages/remark-attachment-refs/turbo.json — all tasks depend on @growi/core, @growi/logger, @growi/remark-growi-directive, @growi/ui
Root turbo.json — @growi/ui#build depends on @growi/core#build (pre-dates the per-package pattern)

Architectural Principles

1. Feature-Based Architecture (Recommended)

All packages should prefer feature-based organization:

{package}/src/
├── features/              # Feature modules
│   ├── {feature-name}/
│   │   ├── index.ts      # Main export
│   │   ├── interfaces/   # TypeScript types
│   │   ├── server/       # Server-side logic (if applicable)
│   │   ├── client/       # Client-side logic (if applicable)
│   │   └── utils/        # Shared utilities

Benefits:

Clear boundaries between features
Easy to locate related code
Facilitates gradual migration from legacy structure

2. Server-Client Separation

For full-stack packages (like apps/app), separate server and client logic:

Server code: Node.js runtime, database access, API routes
Client code: Browser runtime, React components, UI state

This enables better code splitting and prevents server-only code from being bundled into client.

3. Shared Libraries in packages/

Common code should be extracted to packages/:

core: Domain hub (see below)
ui: Reusable React components
editor: Markdown editor
pluginkit: Plugin system framework

@growi/core — Domain & Utilities Hub

@growi/core is the foundational shared package depended on by all other packages (10 consumers). Its responsibilities:

Domain type definitions — Single source of truth for cross-package interfaces (IPage, IUser, IRevision, Ref<T>, HasObjectId, etc.)
Cross-cutting utilities — Pure functions for page path validation, ObjectId checks, serialization (e.g., serializeUserSecurely())
System constants — File types, plugin configs, scope enums
Global type augmentations — Runtime/polyfill type declarations visible to all consumers (e.g., RegExp.escape() via declare global in index.ts)

Key patterns:

Shared types and global augmentations go in @growi/core — Not duplicated per-package. declare global in index.ts propagates to all consumers through the module graph.
Subpath exports for granular imports — @growi/core/dist/utils/page-path-utils instead of barrel imports from root.
Minimal runtime dependencies — Only bson-objectid; ~70% types. Safe to import from both server and client contexts.
Server-specific interfaces are namespaced — Under interfaces/server/.
Dual format (ESM + CJS) — Built via Vite with preserveModules: true and vite-plugin-dts (copyDtsFiles: true).

Version Management with Changeset

GROWI uses Changesets for version management and release notes:

# Add a changeset (after making changes)
npx changeset

# Version bump (generates CHANGELOGs and updates versions)
pnpm run version-subpackages

# Publish packages to npm (for @growi/core, @growi/pluginkit)
pnpm run release-subpackages

Changeset Workflow

Make code changes
Run npx changeset and describe the change
Commit both code and .changeset/*.md file
On release, run pnpm run version-subpackages
Changesets automatically updates CHANGELOG.md and package.json versions

Version Schemes

Main app (apps/app): Manual versioning with RC prereleases
- pnpm run version:patch, pnpm run version:prerelease
Shared libraries (packages/core, packages/pluginkit): Changeset-managed
Microservices (apps/pdf-converter, apps/slackbot-proxy): Independent versioning

Package Categories

Applications (apps/)

Package	Description	Tech Stack
@growi/app	Main wiki application	Next.js (Pages Router), Express, MongoDB, Jotai, SWR
@growi/pdf-converter	PDF export service	Ts.ED, Puppeteer
@growi/slackbot-proxy	Slack bot proxy	Ts.ED, TypeORM, MySQL

Core Libraries (packages/)

Package	Description	Published to npm
@growi/core	Core utilities	✅
@growi/pluginkit	Plugin framework	✅
@growi/ui	UI components	❌ (internal)
@growi/editor	Markdown editor	❌ (internal)
@growi/core-styles	Common styles	❌ (internal)

Development Workflow

Initial Setup

# Install dependencies for all packages
pnpm install

# Bootstrap (install + build dependencies)
turbo run bootstrap

Daily Development

# Start all dev servers (apps/app + dependencies)
turbo run dev

# Run a specific test file (from package directory)
pnpm vitest run yjs.integ

# Run ALL tests / lint for a package
turbo run test --filter @growi/app
turbo run lint --filter @growi/core

Cross-Package Development

When modifying shared libraries (packages/*), ensure dependent apps reflect changes:

Make changes to packages/core
Turborepo automatically detects changes and rebuilds dependents
Test in apps/app to verify

Key Configuration Files

pnpm-workspace.yaml: Defines workspace packages
turbo.json: Turborepo pipeline configuration
.changeset/config.json: Changeset configuration
tsconfig.base.json: Base TypeScript config for all packages
vitest.workspace.mts: Vitest workspace config
biome.json: Biome linter/formatter config

Design Principles Summary

Feature Isolation: Use feature-based architecture for new code
Server-Client Separation: Keep server and client code separate
Shared Libraries: Extract common code to packages/
Type-Driven Development: Define interfaces before implementation
Progressive Enhancement: Migrate legacy code gradually
Version Control: Use Changesets for release management

monorepo-overview

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