NX does not work against a multirepo set up

[wisestmumbler]

We love nx but one of our largest projects has a multirepo set up that we must maintain for some time.

Current Behavior

nx appears not to recognize the packages under our multirepo project

• nx graph is empty
• commands wont run
• no nxdeps.json is generated
• etc

Expected Behavior

Based on my limited dive into the nx code, it seems like the git commands run would be ok in either a monorepo or a multirepo set up

Steps to Reproduce

Our workspaces are internal but found one on opensource that also reproduces the issue and adjusted it to make it more like our internal one: https://github.com/csgibson/nxtest The readme there has some steps to recreate the issue

Failure Logs

Environment

> nx "report"
>  NX   Report complete - copy this into the issue template
Node : 16.15.0
OS   : linux x64
pnpm : 7.11.0
nx : 14.7.5
@nrwl/angular : Not Found
@nrwl/cypress : 14.7.5
@nrwl/detox : Not Found
@nrwl/devkit : 14.7.5
@nrwl/eslint-plugin-nx : Not Found
@nrwl/express : Not Found
@nrwl/jest : 14.7.5
@nrwl/js : 14.7.5
@nrwl/linter : 14.7.5
@nrwl/nest : Not Found
@nrwl/next : Not Found
@nrwl/node : 14.7.5
@nrwl/nx-cloud : Not Found
@nrwl/nx-plugin : Not Found
@nrwl/react : Not Found
@nrwl/react-native : Not Found
@nrwl/schematics : Not Found
@nrwl/storybook : Not Found
@nrwl/web : Not Found
@nrwl/workspace : 14.7.5
typescript : 4.8.3
---------------------------------------
Local workspace plugins:
---------------------------------------
Community plugins:

slack ref: https://nrwlcommunity.slack.com/archives/CMFKWPU6Q/p1663264619089729

[fguitton]

Hiya ! I feel this is another instalment of #5214 ? I don't believe there is any way around the problem at the moment. Hopefully this gets on Nrwl's radar in the short future.

[FrozenPandaz]

Ahah! I found your issue.

First, I wouldn't recommend simply doing a git clone in a gitignore'd directory. Rather I would use git submodules. Which achieves something pretty similar. We'll return to this in a bit.

The reason why Nx can't find your project, is because it is gitignored. Therefore, nx also ignores it.

Now, if we go with git submodules.. instead of running git clone in the workspace directory, we can do this from the root instead:

1. Remove the workspace/* line from .gitignore.
2. Run this git submodule add https://github.com/ngageoint/opensphere workspace/opensphere which will "clone" the repository into the workspace/opensphere directory. However, it will not commit all the files in the repository. Rather, git will track the history in a separate repo.
3. Run nx graph, your project is now there! :tada:

I suggest you read up more here.

[github-actions[bot]]

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