Deploy a Monorepo in App Runner: AWS New Repository Support

Deploy a monorepo in AWS App Runner. AWS announced this new feature for source code repos on October 28th. This new feature allows developers to manage several web & microservice applications from a single code repository. (sou rce)

Using AWS App Runner to Deploy an App from a Monorepo

Do you want to stop maintaining dozens of repositories and migrate to a single monorepo? Many app development teams want to migrate to this style of operation. Instead of managing access, pipelines, etc for X amount of individual repos, all services & applications are managed in a single repository.

But that is a pipedream for most app organizations without expertise in platform dev. Most of the platform as a service provider only allows for a single app per repo. Push the code to the repo, and the provider deploys the code to a single app.

Simple, but limiting.

AWS is trying to fix this in the new App Runner update.

AWS App Runner Support for Monorepo Deployments

Now, developers can set the directory in their source code repository deployment. This simple new functionality adds better support for monorepo deployment. Application teams can deploy many applications from a single repo.

This new feature simplifies the deployment process and reduces the need to manage infrastructure. Developers can benefit from the flexibility of their monorepo applications with the simplicity of running them on AWS App Runner. Additionally, AWS App Runner provides convenient platform-specific managed runtimes and allows developers to focus on writing code instead of managing infrastructure.

Why Use a Monorepo for Development?

Monorepo development has been gaining popularity among developers in recent years. It’s a software development strategy that stores code for multiple distinct projects in a single repository with well-defined relationships. By adopting a monorepo development strategy, app developers can increase collaboration, avoid code duplication, and improve visibility.

It may seem like a nightmare to scale, but monorepos are actively used for many of the world’s largest tech organizations. Google, Meta, Microsoft, Uber and others are large proponents of a monorepo strategy. Also, it is important to note that a monorepo doesn’t mean that all of your code is in a single repo. It just means that more than one thing exists in a single repo.

In this case, you may have a web app, API, serverless functions,related background workers, etc all in a single repo. But you can have additional repos for other needs as well.

Combining AWS App Runner with a Monorepo Development Strategy

This is a big step for App Runner development that can help separate itself from other standard PaaS competitors. I love Monorepo organization. It is one of the first things I recommend to many app development teams. How can you consolidate your work more efficiently? Nothing is worse than opening 10 VS Code editors, adding a change, and pushing up to the repos just for a single feature update.

By combining AWS App Runner with a monorepo development strategy, developers can streamline the deployment process and reduce the need to manage infrastructure. This allows developers to execute the build and run commands from the defined source directory and enables automatic deployment for their services, reducing the need for manual intervention.