Adding a Turborepo application

Learn how to add a new Turborepo application to your Makerkit application

This is an advanced topic - you should only follow these instructions if you are placing a new app within your monorepo and want to keep pulling updates from the Makerkit repository.

In some ways - creating a new repository may be the easiest way to manage your application. However, if you want to keep your application within the monorepo and pull updates from the Makerkit repository, you can follow these instructions.


To pull updates into a separate application outside of web - we can use git subtree.

Basically, we will create a subtree at apps/web and create a new remote branch for the subtree. When we create a new application, we will pull the subtree into the new application. This allows us to keep it in sync with the apps/web folder.

1. Create a subtree

First, we need to create a subtree for the apps/web folder. We will create a new branch called web and create a subtree for the apps/web folder. We will create a branch named web-branch and create a subtree for the apps/web folder.

git subtree split --prefix=apps/web --branch web-branch

2. Create a new application

Now, we can create a new application in the apps folder. For example, let's create a new application called api.

Let's say we want to create a new app pdf-chat at apps/pdf-chat with the same structure as the apps/web folder (which acts as the template for all new apps).

git subtree add --prefix=apps/pdf-chat origin web-branch --squash

You should now be able to see the apps/pdf-chat folder with the contents of the apps/web folder.

3. Update the new application

When you want to update the new application, follow these steps:

Pull updates from the Makerkit repository

The command below will update all the changes from the Makerkit repository:

git pull upstream main

Push the web-branch updates

After you have pulled the updates from the Makerkit repository, you can split the branch again and push the updates to the web-branch:

git subtree split --prefix=apps/web --branch web-branch

Now, you can push the updates to the web-branch:

git push origin web-branch

Pull the updates to the new application

Now, you can pull the updates to the new application:

git subtree pull --prefix=apps/pdf-chat origin web-branch --squash

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