Let's say I develop the 4 packages. My workspace looks like this:

- ios_transmogrify > depends on core_transmogrify
- android_transmogrify > depends on core_transmogrify
- core_transmogrify > depends on core_tools
- core_tools

In the pubspect.yaml of each project repo, they each point to the released version (or remote git) of their dependencies. For example, in ios_transmogrify, we could see:

dependencies:
  core_transmogrify: ^1.1.0

Now, I want to edit files in all 4 packages and see the change during dev in the running program.

My step:

• I Git clone all 4 packages ( or their monorepo)

• For each projects, I manually edit their pubspec.yaml to point to the local path.

  • From package_name: <release_version>
  • To package_name: path: ../the/local/path

• I repeat this process manually 4 times for each project.

• I run the project and I start editing the files.

• When I am done editing, I want to push the change.

  • I do the reverse of the process (Aka editing the pubspec.yaml again to point to their remote repositories)
  • I do this 4 times before I git push!

The problem

That is so manual, prone to human error. And this repeats on every commit followed by a Git push.

What I tried

I explored every options I know.

• I used a custom bash script like setup_locally.sh and prepare_for_push.sh . This is tedious and will work only for one project.

• If I have new project called yet_another_transmogrify that depends on core_tools, I will have to create the two bash files for that new projects.

• I also tried git hooks, but this must be manually set for each project workspace. The setup is not stored remotely in the repo itself.

• I even tried Github actions to modify the pubspect.yaml remotely when it is pushed. But this is expensive, and again, needs to be setup on every project.

Ideal solution that I hope exists but I am not aware of:

It will be so great if we can override specific pubspec.yaml dependencies with another file, let's say pubspect.local.yaml . If the package is in the local.yaml file, it will behave like dependency_override. The advantage here is that pubspect.local.yaml is not checked in Git and pubspec.yaml remain untouched.

I understand that this feature require the dart compiler to be smart enough to do this override.

My question applies for NodeJS, Python, and other langugages. So if there is a tool that is language agnostic, it will be even better.

"It will be so great if we can override specific pubspec.yaml dependencies with another file,"

You mean like dart.dev/tools/pub/dependencies#dependency-overrides which has been in place for years now?

Melos (in the pub) can help you manage those files as well.