There is actually a way.

You can pass --file stdout but I think we can definitely add a --print flag which would print the graph to the terminal.

Would you be interested in making a PR?

Hmm. I feel like there's not too much gain with --print over --file stdout; it's just pretty unclear that the latter is an option from the documentation. Maybe this is just an "improve docs" request?

Or do you think it would be worth having a separate --print flag for better discoverability?

Either way, yeah, I can probably make a PR for this.

Exactly, --print is more self-explanatory. It will show up in the docs, --help, etc.

We cannot remove --file stdout because it allows for nx build nx --graph stdout.

--file stdout also needs to be documented properly though. That would be a separate change though.

I could take this if work hasn't started on it yet. (adding the new flag + docs, docs for --file stdout)

I was looking for a way to use the generated graph programatically as well and was very happy to find out about the stdout option through this ticket. Especially since it works with nx affected --graph <file> as well. Definitely should be documented better!

However, I am still facing some minor issues with this feature:

1. When trying to pipe the output of nx affected -t build --graph stdout to another command the output seems to be truncated. E.g. nx affected -t build --graph stdout | jq . results in "parse error: Unfinished JSON term at EOF at line 2566, column 4".

❯ nx affected -t build --graph stdout | tail
              "options": {
                "lintFilePatterns": [
                  "apps/borneo-cli/**/*.ts"
                ]
              },
              "configurations": {}
            }
          },
          "tags": [],
          "implicitDepen

On the other hand, when redirecting the stdout output to a file, it seems to be complete – obviously, this defeats the purpose of using --graph stdout in the first place, though.

❯ nx affected -t build --graph stdout > graph.json

❯ tail graph.json
      "smithy:build": [],
      "borneo-workers:bundle-workflows:production": [],
      "borneo-encryption:build": [],
      "borneo-client-internal:build": [
        "smithy:build"
      ],
      "smithy-server-express:build": []
    }
  }
}

2. Depending on other options passed, nx graph --file stdout includes other content in the output on stdout, which makes it hard to process it, e.g.

❯ nx graph --affected --file stdout | head

 >  NX   Affected criteria defaulted to --base=main --head=HEAD

{
  "graph": {
    "nodes": {
      "borneo-client-internal": {
        "name": "borneo-client-internal",
        "type": "lib",
        "data": {

If this text would be printed to stderr instead it would be easy to filter out, e.g. nx graph --file stdout 2>/dev/null. Or, alternatively, maybe there should be a --quiet or --silent option or some such.

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