Company
Date Published
Author
Philip Fulcher
Word count
1438
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Nx 21 introduces significant enhancements to the developer experience (DX) within monorepos through features like continuous tasks and an improved terminal UI. Continuous tasks, unlike finite tasks that run and shut down after completion, are long-lived and run until interrupted, enabling seamless dependencies between tasks such as serving a backend whenever a frontend is served. This advancement allows developers to set up task pipelines where tasks can depend on continuous tasks without waiting for them to complete, thereby streamlining workflows and reducing the need for multiple terminal windows or custom scripts. The configuration of these tasks can be detailed within the `nx.json` file or at the project level, ensuring that all build tasks automatically run prerequisite tasks on dependent projects. Additionally, continuous tasks can be applied to custom commands, allowing for real-time updates such as re-generating models upon schema changes, thereby enhancing local development and testing environments. The new features aim to make development processes more efficient and intuitive, offering tools to better visualize and manage task dependencies, ultimately improving the overall DX within the Nx framework.