---
title: Getting Started with Turborepo
description: Create your first monorepo or add Turborepo to an existing project.
---

import Callout from "../../components/Callout";
import { Tabs, Tab } from '../../components/Tabs'

# Overview

Turborepo is a build system for JavaScript and TypeScript monorepos: codebases containing multiple projects, often using multiple frameworks, in a single unified code repository. Monorepos have many advantages, but they require appropriate tooling in order to scale. Turborepo leverages advanced build system ideas and techniques to speed up development, without the configuration and complexity. By abstracting the configurations, scripts, and tooling, Turborepo allows you to start shipping fast.

You can incrementally adopt Turborepo for new and existing projects. To create a new monorepo, get started with:

```sh
npx create-turbo@latest
```

You can also clone a Turborepo starter repository to get a head start on your monorepo. To see Turborepo examples and starters, see the [Turborepo examples directory on GitHub](https://github.com/vercel/turborepo/tree/main/examples).

## Add Turborepo to your existing monorepo

`turbo` works with [Yarn](https://classic.yarnpkg.com/lang/en/), [npm](https://npmjs.com), and [pnpm](https://pnpm.io/) on the following operating systems:

- macOS darwin 64-bit (Intel), ARM 64-bit (Apple Silicon)
- Linux 32-bit, 64-bit, ARM, ARM 64-bit, MIPS 64-bit Little Endian, PowerPC 64-bit Little Endian, IBM Z 64-bit Big Endian
- Windows 32-bit, 64-bit, ARM 64-bit
- FreeBSD 64-bit, ARM 64-bit
- NetBSD AMD64
- Android ARM 64-bit

## Configure workspaces

`turbo` is built on top of Workspaces, a way of managing multiple packages from within a single monorepo package. Turborepo is compatible with the workspace implementations from all package managers. For more information on managing your Turborepo workspaces, see the [Workspaces](./guides/workspaces) documentation.

You can configure workspaces any way you want, but a common folder structure example is keeping applications in the `/apps` folder and packages in the `/packages` folder. The configuration of these folders is different for each package manager.

<Tabs items={['npm', 'yarn', 'pnpm']} storageKey="selected-pkg-manager">
  <Tab>
<div/>
Specify your `workspaces` in your monorepo's root `package.json` file:

```json filename="package.json"
{
 "workspaces": [
   "packages/*",
   "apps/*"
  ]
}
```

  </Tab>
  <Tab>
<div/>
Specify your `workspaces` in your monorepo's root `package.json` file:

```json filename="package.json"
{
 "workspaces": [
   "packages/*",
   "apps/*"
  ]
}
```

  </Tab>
  <Tab>
<div/>
Specify your `packages` in `pnpm-workspace.yaml`.
```yaml filename="pnpm-workspace.yaml"
packages:
  - "packages/*"
  - "apps/*"
```
  </Tab>
</Tabs>

After configuring your workspaces, re-run your package manager's `install` command.

<Callout>
  Note: Nested workspaces are not supported. As package names are required to be unique, moving each package to be a child of the monorepo's root package should meet your needs.
</Callout>

## Install `turbo`

Add `turbo` as a development dependency in the root of your monorepo.

<Tabs items={['npm', 'yarn', 'pnpm']} storageKey="selected-pkg-manager">
  <Tab>
    ```bash
    npm install turbo -D
    ```
  </Tab>
  <Tab>
    ```bash
    yarn add turbo -DW
    ```
  </Tab>
  <Tab>
    ```bash
    pnpm add turbo -Dw
    ```
  </Tab>
</Tabs>

The `turbo` package is a little shell that will install the proper `turbo-<os>-<arch>` package for you operating system and architecture.

## Create `turbo.json`

In the root of your monorepo, create an empty file named `turbo.json`. This will hold the configuration for Turborepo.

If your git repo's base branch is not `origin/master`, then you need to specify a `baseBranch` too. For example, `origin/main`.

```json filename="./turbo.json"
{
  "$schema": "https://turborepo.org/schema.json",
  "baseBranch": "origin/main"
}
```

## Create a `pipeline`

To define your monorepo's task dependency graph, use the [`pipeline`](./features/pipelines) key in the `turbo.json` configuration file at the root of monorepo. `turbo` interprets this configuration to optimally schedule, execute, and cache the outputs of each of the `package.json` scripts defined in your workspaces.

Each key in the [`pipeline`](./features/pipelines) object is the name of a `package.json` script that can be executed by [`turbo run`](./reference/command-line-reference#turbo-run-task1-task2-1). You can specify its dependencies with the [`dependsOn`](./reference/configuration#dependson) key beneath it as well as some other options related to [caching](./features/caching). For more information on configuring your pipeline, see the [`Pipelines`](./core-concepts/pipelines) documentation.

Packages that do not have the specified script defined in their `package.json`'s list of `scripts` will be ignored by `turbo`.

```jsonc filename="./turbo.json"
{
  "$schema": "https://turborepo.org/schema.json",
  "pipeline": {
    "build": {
      // A package's `build` script depends on that package's
      // dependencies' and devDependencies'
      // `build` tasks  being completed first
      // (the `^` symbol signifies `upstream`).
      "dependsOn": ["^build"],
      // note: output globs are relative to each package's `package.json`
      // (and not the monorepo root)
      "outputs": [".next/**"]
    },
    "test": {
      // A package's `test` script depends on that package's
      // own `build` script being completed first.
      "dependsOn": ["build"],
      "outputs": [],
      // A package's `test` script should only be rerun when
      // either a `.tsx` or `.ts` file has changed in `src` or `test` folders.
      "inputs": ["src/**/*.tsx", "src/**/*.ts", "test/**/*.ts", "test/**/*.tsx"]
    },
    "lint": {
      // A package's `lint` script has no dependencies and
      // can be run whenever. It also has no filesystem outputs.
      "outputs": []
    },
    "deploy": {
      // A package's `deploy` script depends on the `build`,
      // `test`, and `lint` scripts of the same package
      // being completed. It also has no filesystem outputs.
      "dependsOn": ["build", "test", "lint"],
      "outputs": []
    }
  }
}
```

The rough execution order for a given package based on the `dependsOn` keys:

1. `build` once its upstream dependencies have run their `build` commands
2. `test` once its _own_ `build` command is finished and has no filesystem outputs (just logs) within a package
3. `lint` runs in an arbitrary order as it has no upstream dependencies
4. `deploy` once its _own_ `build`, `test`, and `lint` commands have finished.

After execution, the full pipline can run:

```sh
npx turbo run build test lint deploy
```

`turbo` will then schedule the execution of each task(s) to optimize usage of the machine's resources.

## Edit `.gitignore`

Add `.turbo` to your `.gitignore` file. The CLI uses these folders for logs and certain task outputs.

```diff
+ .turbo
```

Make sure that your task artifacts, the files and folders you want cached, are also included in your `.gitignore`.

```diff
+ build/**
+ dist/**
+ .next/**
```

Re-run your npm client's `install` command to check your configuration.

## Create `package.json` scripts

Add or update `scripts` in your monorepo's root `package.json` file and have them delegate to `turbo`.

```jsonc filename="./package.json"
{
  "scripts": {
    "build": "turbo run build",
    "test": "turbo run test",
    "lint": "turbo run lint",
    "dev": "turbo run dev"
  }
}
```

## Build your monorepo

<Tabs items={['npm', 'yarn', 'pnpm']} storageKey="selected-pkg-manager">
  <Tab>
    ```sh
    npm run build
    ```
  </Tab>
  <Tab>
    ```sh
    yarn build
    ```
  </Tab>
  <Tab>
    ```sh
    pnpm build
    ```
  </Tab>
</Tabs>

Depending on your monorepo setup, some artifacts might already be caching properly. In the next sections, we'll show how `turbo` works, how `scope` works, and then how to get caching working after that.

## Configure Remote Caching

A major key 🔑 to Turborepo's speed is that it is both lazy and efficient—it does the least amount of work possible and it tries to never redo work that's already been done before.

At the moment, Turborepo caches your tasks on your local filesystem (i.e. "single-player mode," if you will). However, what if there was a way to take advantage of the computational work done by your teammates or your CI (i.e. "co-op multiplayer mode")? What if there was a way to teleport and share a single cache across machines? Almost like a "Dropbox" for your Turborepo cache.

> Remote Caching has entered the chat.

Turborepo can use a technique known as Remote Caching to share cache artifacts across machines for an additional speed boost.

<Callout type="error">
  Remote Caching is a powerful feature of Turborepo, but with great power comes great responsibility. Make sure you are caching correctly first and double check handling of environment variables. Please also remember Turborepo treats logs as artifacts, so be aware of what you are printing to the console.
</Callout>

### Using Remote Caching for Local development

Turborepo uses [Vercel](https://vercel.com?utm_source=turborepo.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=docs-link) as its default remote caching provider. If you want to link your local turborepo to your Remote Cache you can authenticate the Turborepo CLI with your Vercel account:

```sh
npx turbo login
```

Then, link your turborepo to your remote cache:

```
npx turbo link
```

Once enabled, make some changes to a package or application you are currently caching and run tasks against it with `turbo run`.
Your cache artifacts will now be stored locally and in your Remote Cache. To verify that this worked, delete your local Turborepo cache:

```sh
rm -rf ./node_modules/.cache/turbo
```

Run the same build again. If things are working properly, `turbo` should not execute tasks locally, but rather download both the logs and artifacts from your Remote Cache and replay them back to you.

<Callout>
  **Note: When connecting to an sso-enabled Vercel team, you must provide your Team slug as an argument to `npx turbo login`.**
</Callout>

```
npx turbo login --sso-team=<team-slug>
```

## Next Steps

You're now up and running with Turborepo, but there are still a few things to do:

- [Understand how Turborepo caching works](./core-concepts/caching)
- [Correctly handle environment variables](./core-concepts/caching#alter-caching-based-on-environment-variables-and-files)
- [Learn to orchestrate task running with pipelines](./core-concepts/pipelines)
- [Efficiently filter package tasks](./core-concepts/filtering)
- [Configure Turborepo with your CI provider](./ci)
