nx show projects should return packages' pathnames

[dmaklygin]

I was trying to extract affected packages by changes I had made.
Unfortunately, nx graph --affected returns deprecated affectedPackages attribute I should not rely on.
So, I have to run both commands in a sequence:

1. nx show projects --affected
2. nx graph

Unfortunately, nx show projects returns only a simple list of packages names, and it's not enough to determine packages location.
If nx show projects --affected returns extended list of packages, it would be totally enough

Motivation

I was trying to ditribute tests execution between runners, so I had to determine affected packages and gradually distribute tests betweeen runners.

Suggested Implementation

Return a list of objects. Each object should have the following:

1. Package name
2. Package location

[Alonski]

So I did something similar to create a custom gpt (go to project) bash function.
Important for you:

monorepo_root=$(git rev-parse --show-cdup)
project_path=$(nx show project "$1" | jq -r .root)
cd "${monorepo_root}${project_path}"

Full script:

# For usage information see inlined usage conditional
gtp() {
    # Show usage if on errors
    showUsage=0

    # Check that an argument was passed
    # https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/25945/how-to-check-if-there-are-no-parameters-provided-to-a-command
    if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
        echo "Argument [projectName] not passed"
        showUsage=1
    fi

    # Check that needed programs exist
    # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/592620/how-can-i-check-if-a-program-exists-from-a-bash-script
    if ! command -v git &> /dev/null; then
        echo "git could not be found, please install it globally"
        showUsage=1
    fi

    if ! command -v nx &> /dev/null; then
        echo "nx could not be found, please install it globally"
        showUsage=1
    fi

    if ! command -v jq &> /dev/null; then
        echo "jq could not be found, please install it globally"
        showUsage=1
    fi

    # Print usage
    if [ $showUsage -eq 1 ]; then
        echo "Usage: $0 [projectName]"
        echo "Example: $0 @crowdstrike/mega-slat-table"
        echo "This function uses NX to CD into a project by the project name"
        echo "Required globally installed commands: git, nx, jq"
        return 1
    fi

    # Get monorepo root using git. Ex: ../../../ (Needs to relative in case of worktree)
    monorepo_root=$(git rev-parse --show-cdup)

    # Get NX project path relative to root. Ex: packages/apps/store
    project_path=$(nx show project "$1" | jq -r .root)

    # Show error if project_path failed
    if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "NX failed to show the project, make sure you are in the monorepo and the project name is correct"
        # Run gtp again with no arguments to show usage
        gtp
        return 1
    fi

    # CD into the root+path combo
    cd "${monorepo_root}${project_path}"
}

[dmaklygin]

I was able to make it work via nx show projects and nx graph.
But, having a single command would be more optimal.

[aikrez]

For our tooling we relied on the project path name in the workspace.json which is now removed. Currently I am looking for a way to ditch the old workspace.json and get the project path.
It would be nice that nx show projects had an additional argument to return the full detail of the project like nw show project does.

[MaxKless]

Hi!
For automated tooling, I think having a more programatically readable format makes sense. So I think it's a valid feature request.

It needs a little bit more design, though. There is already a --json flag in nx show projects so any changes to that functionality would be a breaking change which I'd like to avoid.

You could read the list of affected projects in JSON format by running npx nx show projects --json --affected and then extract information about the individual projects from .nx/cache/project-graph.json or by using the programmatic API createProjectGraphAsync from @nx/devkit.

I'd love some more concrete thoughts on how you would design this updated API and what use cases you have that aren't solvable with another solution. Let's continue the conversation in a discussion :)