nx/docs/shared/concepts/how-project-graph-is-built.md

How the Project Graph is Built

Nx creates a graph of all the dependencies between projects in your workspace using three sources of information:

1. Package dependencies defined in the package.json file for each project.

   If the myapp/package.json file has this dependency:

   {
     "dependencies": {
       "@myorg/awesome-library": "*"
     }
   }
   

   Then my-app depends on awesome-library.

   Note: We typically use * for the dependency instead of a specific version because we want to depend on the version of the library as it currently exists in the repo.

2. Typescript import statements referencing a particular project's path alias

   For instance, if a file in my-app has this code:

   import { something } from '@myorg/awesome-library';
   

   Then my-app depends on awesome-library

   This can be turned on or off with the analyzeSourceFiles flag.

3. Manually created implicitDependencies in the project configuration file.

   If your project configuration has this content:

{% tabs %} {% tab label="package.json" %}

{
  "name": "myapp",
  "nx": {
    "implicitDependencies": ["some-api"]
  }
}

{% /tab %} {% tab label="project.json" %}

{
  "root": "/libs/myapp",
  "implicitDependencies": ["some-api"]
}

{% /tab %} {% /tabs %}

Then my-app depends on some-api.