Migrating to a monorepo

[eyelidlessness]

In the next couple of months, we will migrate the following projects to a monorepo:

• enketo-express (which will become the monorepo)
• enketo-core
• enketo-transformer
• openrosa-xpath-evaluator

When complete, the enketo-express repository will be renamed to enketo, with each project included in the same repo as sub-packages.

Why?

Migrating to a monorepo will improve:

• tracking issues affecting multiple sub-packages, or manifesting further up the stack
• ability to navigate between related code across packages
• identification of dependencies which are less obvious with separate repositories today
• safety, productivity, success delivering features and fixes
• flexibility to reassess boundaries and responsibilities between projects, and to generally take a more holistic approach to changes
• reduced friction for posting and tracking feedback/issues/PRs
• ability to increase consistency across all packages

When?

We intend to make this change within the next couple of months, as it will unblock stalled and pending changes which are high priority but difficult to move forward otherwise.

Goals

To the extent possible, we consider these goals essential:

• Preserve/migrate git history, and any other repository-specific content such as issues, for all projects
• Continue to publish enketo-core/enketo-transformer/openrosa-xpath-evalutor as standalone packages to NPM
• Update documentation as appropriate to ensure it remains correct and accessed easily
• Make the most minimal, least disruptive change possible without introducing unnecessary hindrances

Expected impact

• For users installing the existing NPM packages, there should be no immediate impact.
• For users providing feedback, reporting will be simpler as there will be one place to file all issues. Otherwise, some URLs will obviously change, but we'll ensure there redirects where possible and provide links otherwise.
• For contributors:
  • The enketo-core/enketo-transformer/openrosa-xpath-evaluator projects will be moved to the monorepo, so forks and clones of those repositories will need to be updated/replaced
  • The directory structures will change
  • We may make some related tooling changes (such as package manager)

[lognaturel]

This work will likely start in the next week or two. Since there have been no comments, we're hopeful the impact will be minimal.

@MartijnR ping since I know you maintain at least one fork which will need to decide how to adapt

[MartijnR]

Thanks for the ping. Looks like a big job for you to set this up. I forgot to look into this (I have not worked on monorepos), and won't be doing that for a while, but I'm sure we'll figure it out! pinging fyi @kkrumlian, @pbowen-oc, @svadla-oc

…

On Thu, Aug 3, 2023 at 3:12 PM Hélène Martin ***@***.***> wrote: This work will likely start in the next week or two. Since there have been no comments, we're hopeful the impact will be minimal. @MartijnR <https://github.com/MartijnR> ping since I know you maintain at least one fork which will need to decide how to adapt. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#951>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAEZFFQMAFAB56YQV4VKVBLXTPZ3RANCNFSM6AAAAAAXUVKB2Y> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

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[lognaturel]

The monorepo is now up at https://github.com/enketo/enketo! We will work with it for a week or two as we prepare the next releases to make sure everything is structured in a usable way. We expect to move issues and archive this repo in mid-October. 🚀

[lognaturel]

Follow up tasks tracked at #3