How TikTok Manages a 200K File Frontend MonoRepo

A MonoRepo, short for a monolithic repository, is a software development strategy where a single repository contains multiple projects, libraries, and services.

The good parts of a MonoRepo are:

• Better code sharing
• Simplified dependency management
• A unified view of the code base

However, the bigger the MonoRepo gets, the slower the various Git operations.

TikTok faced a similar change with its frontend TypeScript MonoRepo with 200K files.

To deal with this, TikTok built a tool named Sparo that optimizes the performance of Git operations for large frontend MonoRepos.

Sparo dramatically improved the performance of Git operations. Some stats are as follows

• Git clone time went from 40 mins to just 2 mins.
• Checkout went from 1.5 minutes to 30 seconds.
• Status went from 7 seconds to 1 second.
• Git commit time went from 15 seconds to 11 seconds.