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TurboRepo: A Monorepo Tool for Modern Web Development

If you’ve ever worked on multiple related projects—like a frontend, backend, and shared utilities—you know how messy it can get managing them separately. TurboRepo is a high-performance build system for JavaScript and TypeScript monorepos that makes managing multiple apps and packages much easier.

What is TurboRepo?

TurboRepo is a tool by Vercel for organizing multiple projects in a single repository (a monorepo). It:

  • Speeds up builds with incremental caching.
  • Makes it easy to share code between apps.
  • Reduces dependency duplication.
  • Improves developer experience.

Why Use TurboRepo?

Without TurboRepo, multiple repos can cause:

  • Duplicated code.
  • Long build times.
  • Messy dependencies.

TurboRepo solves this by:

  • Storing common packages in one place.
  • Running tasks only when needed.
  • Sharing dependencies across projects.

Setting Up TurboRepo

1. Install

npm install turbo --global

Or start with the built-in starter:

npx create-turbo@latest

2. Structure

my-turbo-project/
  apps/
    web/
    api/
  packages/
    ui/
    utils/
  turbo.json
  package.json

3. Configure turbo.json

{
  "$schema": "https://turbo.build/schema.json",
  "pipeline": {
    "build": {
      "dependsOn": ["^build"],
      "outputs": ["dist/**"]
    },
    "dev": {
      "cache": false
    }
  }
}

4. Run

 turbo run build
 turbo run dev

My Take

TurboRepo’s caching and shared package system make full-stack workflows faster and cleaner. If you’re juggling frontend + backend projects, it’s a must-try.

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