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Nx Incremental Builds

As of v1.8.0, @nx-dotnet/core:build is configured by default to pass --no-dependencies to the dotnet CLI. When working outside of Nx, this would require developers to manually build the project's dependencies. This is not the case within Nx, due to the targetDependencies setup inside nx.json.

When using target dependencies, Nx knows to build all dependents before building a library or application. By falling back on this logic, instead of letting dotnet handle building dependencies, we can better take advantage of Nx's cache and avoid duplicated builds.

Avoiding duplicate builds during dotnet execution​

Consider the following workspace:

  • apps/webApi
  • libs/classLib

If the webApi project depends on the classlib project, running the following commands without --no-dependencies results in the following outcomes:

  • nx build webApi
    • Nx analyzes the dependency graph, and runs nx build classlib
    • Nx kicks off a child tao instance running the build executor for classlib
    • dotnet build apps/webApi/webApi.csproj
    • dotnet reads the csproj and builds classlib first
    • dotnet builds webApi
  • nx build classlib
    • Nx analyzes the dependency graph, and finds no child tasks
    • dotnet build libs/classlib/classlib.csproj
    • dotnet builds classlib
  • nx affected:build
    • Nx analyzes the dependency graph, and finds that webapi and classlib should be built.
    • Since webapi depends on classlib, Nx runs build classlib first.
      • dotnet build libs/classlib/classlib.csproj
        • dotnet builds classlib
    • Nx runs build webapi
      • dotnet build apps/webApi/webApi.csproj
        • dotnet reads the csproj and builds classlib first
        • dotnet builds webApi

This means that every time you build webApi or Nx affected you are waiting for 1 extra build of the classlib library. This continues to scale up and gets worse as more projects are added to the monorepo.

By punting the dependency builds to Nx, you no longer get these duplicate runs. The same scenario would look like this:

  • nx build webApi
    • Nx analyzes the dependency graph, and runs nx build classlib
    • Nx kicks off a child tao instance running the build executor for classlib
    • dotnet build apps/webApi/webApi.csproj
    • dotnet builds webApi
  • nx build classlib
    • Nx analyzes the dependency graph, and finds no child tasks
    • dotnet build libs/classlib/classlib.csproj
    • dotnet builds classlib
  • nx affected:build
    • Nx analyzes the dependency graph, and finds that webapi and classlib should be built.
    • Since webapi depends on classlib, Nx runs build classlib first.
      • dotnet build libs/classlib/classlib.csproj
        • dotnet builds classlib
    • Nx runs build webapi
      • dotnet build apps/webApi/webApi.csproj
        • dotnet builds webApi

Note that the extra builds for classlib vanished.

Optimizing Cache Hits​

Lets use the same workspace from above, and imagine that we are working on a feature that only touched the webapi.

Running the following commands without --no-dependencies results in the following outcomes:

  • nx affected:build
    • Nx analyzes the change set, and finds that only the webapi needs to be built.
    • Nx analyzes the dependency graph, and finds that only the webapi requires the classlib.
    • Since the classlib hasn't been changed, Nx pulls it down from the remote cache or restores from local if a cache is available.
    • Nx runs build webapi
      • dotnet build apps/webApi/webApi.csproj
        • dotnet reads the csproj and builds classlib first (Note here, the classlib was still built from source, despite Nx restoring it from cache)
        • dotnet builds webApi

With -no-dependencies, the same scenario looks like this:

  • nx affected:build
    • Nx analyzes the change set, and finds that only the webapi needs to be built.
    • Nx analyzes the dependency graph, and finds that only the webapi requires the classlib.
    • Since the classlib hasn't been changed, Nx pulls it down from the remote cache or restores from local if a cache is available.
    • Nx runs build webapi
      • dotnet build apps/webApi/webApi.csproj --no-dependencies
        • dotnet builds webApi