nx release in independent mode asks for version bump on unchanged projects

[herrmannben]

Current Behavior

Given an integrated repo with two libraries (lib-a and lib-b) and one app (app-a)
lib-a is a dependency of app-a .
After a change in lib-a, when running nx release version, Nx asks for version bump for app-a, lib-a and lib-b

Expected Behavior

Nx should ask for version bump only for lib-a (the updated lib) and app-a (the app using lib-a) but not for lib-b.

GitHub Repo

https://github.com/herrmannben/test-nx-release

Steps to Reproduce

1. Clone the repo
2. Do a change in lib-a (Change the return value of the function)
3. Commit
4. Run nx release --skip-publish

Nx Report

>  NX   Report complete - copy this into the issue template

   Node   : 20.9.0
   OS     : win32-x64
   npm    : 10.1.0

   nx (global)        : 18.0.4
   nx                 : 18.0.4
   @nx/js             : 18.0.4
   @nx/jest           : 18.0.4
   @nx/linter         : 18.0.4
   @nx/eslint         : 18.0.4
   @nx/workspace      : 18.0.4
   @nx/devkit         : 18.0.4
   @nx/esbuild        : 18.0.4
   @nx/eslint-plugin  : 18.0.4
   @nx/node           : 18.0.4
   @nrwl/tao          : 18.0.4
   typescript         : 5.3.3

Failure Logs

No response

Package Manager Version

No response

Operating System

• macOS
• Linux
• Windows
• Other (Please specify)

Additional Information

No response

[origranot]

Same here, any update?
@fahslaj @JamesHenry

[fahslaj]

Hi @herrmannben and @origranot, thank you for opening this issue. I'm not sure yet if this should be the default behavior, but it makes sense that you would want to automatically skip over the unchanged packages in a workflow where independent packages are released as-needed and not all together.

For now, you can put together a workaround using nx release --projects="app-a,lib-a". This will only run the release for the specified projects. With some scripting magic, I think you could get close to the desired behavior by combining this --projects filter with nx show projects --affected to return a list of changed projects.

[herrmannben]

Thank you for your response.
For now, the nx release --projects="app-a,lib-a" is less relevant as we have a lot of libraries and services in the monorepo, and wanted a safe way using NX to bump versions of services and libraries that don't have a change but use a dependency that has been updated.
We also tried to write a script using nx show projects --affected but we were getting all the packages in the list if the package-lock file has changed.

[or-orchid]

+1 for this request

[therockstorm]

Related issue: #27887.