Yarn 4 - yarn link & docker

[dnajd]

I'd love some advice on using Yarn 4's yarn link.

Context

Got a handful of nextjs frontend apps and a couple npm packages
90% of the time we can work on them individually (some folks native & some local docker dev)
Every now and then it's helpful to yarn link the npm packages.
We have scripts that automate orchestration for docker devs
With Yarn 1 we could run yarn link and it would work smoothly.
Now with Yarn 4 the package.json and the yarn.lock files are affected by yarn link and this has added some friction.

Native Dev

With native developmentn

• you have to be aware the package.json and yarn.lock files are modified and not commit them to the git repo
• but if you made intentional changes to those files, you need to unlink before committing any changes

Docker Dev

With docker development it's even more difficult

• npm packages are run in containers that compile when files change
• dist folders are in external volumes that frontend apps can use
• frontend apps mount the dist folders into a /dev-pkg folder
• frontend apps automatically yarn link anything that shows up in there (it's nice)

But when I bring down the containers and run them without the external volumes (don't want to yarn link)

• the volumes wont be mounted
• when the frontend app comes up it tries to yarn unlink any symlinks that don't have an associated external volume / dist folder
• yarn unlink fails because the symlink doesn't point to anything anymore

So how do I make this easy

• I can remove the symlink and yarn install
• but then I'm left with a package.json and yarn.lock file that have modifications
• I want to avoid scripting something that cleans up package.json and yarn.lock, but that seems a bit heavy handed

Request for advice

Do native devs just have to deal with the modified committable files?
Is there a better way to do docker dev (we can't do a mono-repo)
could yarn unlink be a bit more flexible and just undo anything that it can instead of insisting on the symlink pointing to files?

[dnajd]

Well for the docker dev issue I found a simple solution.

Yarn link all packages at once

yarn link ../package-one ../package-two

Then on next container start if symlinks are orphaned, unlink them all at once by package name

yarn unlink @org/package-one @org/package-two