Everything else remains the same (Create a new project, add typescript, add express…)

The only thing that’s different is that tsc doesn’t perform great with turborepo

You can use either tsup or esbuild for building your backend application

1. Create apps/backend
2. Initialize empty ts repo

npm init -y
npx tsc --init

1. Use base tsconfig (Ref - https://github.com/vercel/turbo/blob/main/examples/kitchen-sink/apps/api/tsconfig.json )

{
  "extends": "@repo/typescript-config/base.json",
  "compilerOptions": {
    "lib": ["ES2015"],
    "module": "CommonJS",
    "outDir": "./dist",
  },
  "exclude": ["node_modules"],
  "include": ["."]
}

1. Add dependencies

npm i express @types/express

1. Add src/index.ts

import express from "express";

const app = express()

app.get("/", (req, res) => {
    res.json({
        message: "hello world"
    });
})

1. Update turbo.json

{
  "extends": ["//"],
  "pipeline": {
    "build": {
      "outputs": ["dist/**"]
    }
  }
}

1. Install esbuild

npm install esbuild

1. Add build script to package.json

"build": "esbuild src/index.ts --platform=node --bundle --outdir=dist"