I'm running a Node.js monorepo project using yarn workspaces. File structure looks like this:

workspace_root
    node_modules
    package.json
    apps
        appA
            node_modules
            package.json
        appB
            node_modules
            package.json
    libs
        libA
            dist
            node_modules
            package.json

All apps are independents, but they all require libA

I'm running all these apps with docker-compose. My question here is how to handle properly all the dependencies as I don't want the node_modules folders to be synchronized with host. Locally, when I run yarn install at workspace root, it installs all dependencies for all projects, populating the different node_modules. In docker-compose, ideally each app should not be aware of others apps.

My approach so far, which is working but not ideal and not very scalable.

version: "3.4"

services:
  # The core is in charge of installing dependencies for ALL services. Each service must for wait the core, and then
  # just do their job, not having to handle install.
  appA:
    image: node:14-alpine
    volumes: # We must load every volumes for install
        - .:/app  # Mount the whole workspace structure
        - root_node_modules:/app/node_modules
        - appA_node_modules:/app/apps/appA/node_modules
        - appB_node_modules:/app/apps/appB/node_modules
        - libA_node_modules:/app/libs/libA/node_modules
    working_dir: /app/apps/appA
    command: [sh, -c, "yarn install && yarn run start"]

  appB:
    image: node:14-alpine
    volumes: # We must load every volumes for install
        - .:/app  # Mount the whole workspace structure
        - root_node_modules:/app/node_modules
        - appB_node_modules:/app/apps/appB/node_modules
    working_dir: /app/apps/appB
    command: [sh, -c, "/scripts/wait-for-it.sh appA:4001  -- yarn run start"]

    # And so on for all apps....
  
volumes:
    root_node_modules:
        driver: local
    appA_node_modules:
        driver: local
    appB_node_modules:
        driver: local
    libA_node_modules:
        driver: local

The main drawbacks I see:

• Service appA is responsible for install dependencies of ALL apps.
• I have to create a volume for each app + one for the root node_modules
• The whole project is mounted in each service, even though I'm using only a specific folder

I would like to avoid a build for development, as it has to be done each time you add a dependency, it's quite cumbersome and it's slowing you down