Monorepo with Turborepo for a React Micro-Frontends Architecture
Introduction
As front-end development becomes more advanced, micro-frontends (MFEs) is an architecture that allows for scalable applications. Just as you would implement microservices for back-end functionality, micro-frontends enable independence of UI functionality in development.
However, with many MFEs also come challenges—with versioning, shared dependencies, deployment, and developer experience. This is where the mono repo and Turbo repo come into play to ease many of the challenges.
This article will teach you how to implement a mono repo with Turbo repo to achieve scalable micro-frontends architecture using React.
Why Use a Mono repo?
Before we dive into the setup, let’s address a key question:
Why go with a mono repo for a micro-frontend’s architecture like 12mf?
Here’s why it makes a lot of sense:
- Centralized Dependency Management
Instead of juggling versions across multiple projects, a monorepo lets you keep all your shared packages and dependencies in one place. Simple and clean. - Effortless Code Sharing
Whether it’s common components, utility functions, or your design system, everything can be shared easily across different micro-frontends. - A Consistent Developer Experience
You can define one set of tools for linting, testing, building, and more—so everyone on the team is on the same page. - Atomic Changes Across Projects
Need to update a shared component and fix how it’s used across multiple apps? Do it all in one PR and one commit. No version bumps, no waiting. - Smarter CI/CD Pipelines
With tools like Turbo repo or Nx, you can build and deploy only what’s changed. Faster pipelines, happier devs.
What is Turbo repo?
Turbo repo is a blazing fast build system for JS & Typescript mono repos.
- Remote Caching: It doesn’t reproduce what you’ve already produced. You have local and remote build caching to avoid replays.
- Task Pipelines: By defining builds, linting, testing and any other scripts which are executed as tasks, the Turbo repo knows about dependencies and ordering.
- Incremental Builds: Only those packages in need of rebuilding are rebuilt. This is also a really helpful time saver.
- Seamless Integration with React, Next. js, and TypeScript Absolutely no setup or special configuration required it’s an adrotator with no-so-much magic.
Pros:
- Awesome Developer Experience: Everything in one place, single work environment, almost no context switching; developers stay in the zone and ship fast.
- Easy to share and maintain code: You can reuse all shared components and utilities, and a design system across
- Atomic Pull Request Every change for a component across multiple MFEs could be proposed in a single PR, at a single version, at a single instants. Very efficient.
- Turbo repo Builds Faster: Cache as well as task pipelines reduce running everything each time tests/builds run and saves a massive amount of CI and local dev time.
Cons:
- Understanding Module Federation Isn’t Always Straightforward: That means figuring out getting shared dependencies or dynamic imports configured.
- Create Clear Boundaries: When everything lives in one mono repo, it’s a little too easy to couple such concerns too closely. Discipline teams need to be certain that they are not using accidental spaghetti-architecture.
- Additional Logic May Be Necessary for CI/CD While it’s wonderful to deploy what’s changed, success in this area typically requires yet more scripting or a tool with its own constructs available within CI pipelines.
Repository Structure
Conclusion
Mono repo with Turbo repo has been a really nice experience for our React micro-frontend architecture, it can scale but we still retain the small team feel. Doesn’t stop teams from building and deploying on their own, but at the same time, they still get shared code, simplified workflows, and faster builds.
Yes, there are challenges — particularly around things like Module Federation and keeping boundaries clean — but with the appropriate structure and discipline, indoor-JavaScript far outweighs its cons.
If you are working on a complicated frontend project across lots of teams or domains, this can be a game changer. Try it out and see your developer experience (and velocity) increase.
Monorepo with Turborepo for a React Micro-Frontends Architecture – Skybridge Infotech