$TURBO_ROOT$ special string

[abernier]

Goals

Since turbo.json.tasks.inputs' paths are relative to the package, will avoid ../../.. to locate a file outside

Non-goals

No response

Background

https://discord.com/channels/818588653005176832/1267594181015244821

Proposal

before:

{
  "tasks": {
    "test": {
      "inputs": [
        "$TURBO_DEFAULT$",
        "dist/**",
        "../../packages/e2e/bin/test.mjs",
        "../../packages/e2e/{playwright.config.ts,snapshot.test.js}"
      ],
      "cache": true
    },
    ...
  }
}

after:

{
  "tasks": {
    "test": {
      "inputs": [
        "$TURBO_DEFAULT$",
        "dist/**",
        "$TURBO_ROOT$/packages/e2e/bin/test.mjs",
        "$TURBO_ROOT$/packages/e2e/{playwright.config.ts,snapshot.test.js}"
      ],
      "cache": true
    },
    ...
  }
}

[anthonyshew]

Can you add to the original post the problem that this solves? Adding specialized microsyntaxes comes with the cost of users having specialized knowledge of Turborepo. While I'm sure this potentially does solve a problem, ../../ doesn't immediately strike me as a pain point by itself.

What problem are we solving as we trade the simplicity of universal path patterns (../../) for a Turborepo-specific micro-syntax?

[abernier]

maybe it's not an issue then, was just surprised to go relative here to point out files from another package, but why not

(or maybe using the name of another package is already possible? @my/otherpkg/path/to/file1)

[anthonyshew]

I wasn't necessarily saying it's not a worthwhile idea. I want to understand more where this idea came from and what we want to solve with it. 😄

P.S. No, you're not able to use a package name for these globs at this time.

[wagenet]

Relative paths are fragile and could fail if the nesting varies between workspace packages.

[anthonyshew]

This was what I was thinking of and was hoping to see added to the original post. I didn't want to suggest a use case in case that wasn't the one OP was looking for. 😁

[jzxhuang]

would love to see something like this! Gave a concrete use case here: #9203