Yarn Link, Changes To Linked Package Not Reflected in Host App

Question

I'm learning about using yarn link to work on a package and have changes reflected in a host app and I either don't get something or somethings not working.

It is all built in angular5..

I have an app MyApp that contains, among others, @org/my-package in node_modules.

I need to make changes to my-package and in order to serve the changes I use yarn link to create symlink and test the package in MyApp.

This is what I do...

In my-package, I run a build. It creates the distribution files. I then cli into dist package and run yarn link.. This is success.. I get the instruction to use yarn link @org/my-package in MyApp cli..

Then I go to MyApp, and I run yarn link @org/my-package. This is success as well..

However when I make changes in my-package and run a build again, they don't get reflected in MyApp.

What am I not understanding?

I get no errors.

Is @org/my-package that is in node_modules in MyApp supposed to be there or not? Isn't yarn link on the dist in my-package meant to override that one?

No matter how much I search it looks like yarn documentation is a bit light on this topic.

Answer 1

I faced similar kind of a issue. But what I did was edit the package.json in the project that depends on the component library to for example "@org/my-package": "link:../packages/dist/my-package" (edit the path) This only works with yarn, if you use npm this is not an option, but you could use npm link.

I had to do a yarn install after that in the project. So, when you re-build my-package, the @org/my-package that is in node_modules in MyApp supposed to be updated.