path aliasing in monorepo

[stefanofa]

the monorepo support in shadcn-ui is cool to see, but I’ve got some concerns about how apps/web uses path aliases with @workspace/ui.

right now, the setup has two workspaces: apps/web and packages/ui (named @workspace/ui).
the apps/web package.json lists @workspace/ui as a dependency, and pnpm i installs it into node_modules. standard monorepo stuff, works fine.

the issue is in apps/web’s tsconfig.json:

"compilerOptions": {
  "baseUrl": ".",
  "paths": {
    "@workspace/ui/*": ["../../packages/ui/src/*"]
  }
}

this alias makes typescript resolve @workspace/ui/* imports directly to packages/ui/src/* on the file system, skipping the node_modules version and package.json exports.

the main risk is unintentional usage since it skips the exports field in @workspace/ui and lets you import anything from packages/ui/src without actually installing it. plus, people starting a new project might see this and think it’s a best practice they need to copy for every package, which could spread messy setups.

why use a path alias like this instead of relying on node_modules resolution?
what’s the goal here? Is it solving a specific issue I’m missing?

thoughts? trying to figure out if this is intentional or something to tweak while monorepo support is still experimental.

[philipaarseth]

Adding this in the web tsconfig file also seems to break tailwind v4. At least how it's setup in other tailwind v4 starters.