Monorepo vs multi-repo decision in Git - Hands-On Comparison

Monorepo vs Multi-repo Decision

📖 Scenario: You are part of a small software team deciding how to organize your code repositories. You want to understand the difference between using a single repository for all projects (monorepo) versus using separate repositories for each project (multi-repo).

🎯 Goal: Learn how to create and inspect both monorepo and multi-repo setups using git commands. Understand the basic commands to initialize, add files, commit, and check repository status for both approaches.

📋 What You'll Learn

Initialize a git repository

Create files and commit changes

Understand repository structure differences

Use basic git commands: git init, git add, git commit, git status

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Software teams often decide between monorepo and multi-repo structures to organize their code. Monorepos keep all projects in one place, making shared code easier to manage. Multi-repos separate projects, which can simplify access control and reduce repository size.

💼 Career

Understanding monorepo vs multi-repo is important for developers and DevOps engineers to manage codebases effectively, collaborate with teams, and maintain CI/CD pipelines.

1

Initialize a monorepo with two projects

Create a new directory called monorepo. Inside it, create two folders named projectA and projectB. Initialize a git repository in monorepo using git init.

Git

# Create directory monorepo with subfolders projectA and projectB
# Initialize git repository inside monorepo
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use mkdir to create folders and git init to start a git repository.

2

Add a config file to the monorepo

Inside the monorepo directory, create a file named config.txt with the text monorepo configuration. Use git add config.txt to stage the file.

Git

mkdir monorepo
cd monorepo
mkdir projectA projectB
git init
# Create config.txt with text and add it to git
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use echo to write text to a file and git add to stage it.

3

Commit the config file in the monorepo

Commit the staged config.txt file in the monorepo repository with the message Initial commit with config using git commit.

Git

mkdir monorepo
cd monorepo
mkdir projectA projectB
git init
echo "monorepo configuration" > config.txt
git add config.txt
# Commit the config.txt file with message
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git commit -m "message" to commit staged files with a message.

4

Initialize two separate repositories for multi-repo

Create two directories named projectA and projectB separately. Inside each directory, initialize a git repository using git init. Then create a file named config.txt in each with text projectA config and projectB config respectively. Add and commit these files with messages Initial commit projectA and Initial commit projectB.

Git

mkdir monorepo
cd monorepo
mkdir projectA projectB
git init
echo "monorepo configuration" > config.txt
git add config.txt
git commit -m "Initial commit with config"
# Create projectA and projectB directories separately
# Initialize git in each
# Create config.txt with respective text
# Add and commit each file
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Repeat the steps of creating directories, initializing git, creating files, adding, and committing for each project separately.