On September 30, 2020 we held ShipIt! presents: Packwerk by Shopify. A video for the event is now available for you to learn more about our latest open source tool for creating packages with enforced boundaries in Rails apps. Click here to watch the video.
The Shopify core codebase is large, complex, and growing by the day. To better understand these complex systems, we use software architecture to create structural boundaries. Ruby doesn't come with a lot of boundary enforcements out of the box. Ruby on Rails only provides a very basic layering structure, so it's hard to scale the application without any solid pattern for boundary enforcement. In comparison, other languages and frameworks have built-in mechanisms for vertical boundaries, like Elixir’s umbrella projects.
As Shopify grows, it’s crucial we establish a new architecture pattern so large scale domains within the monolith can interact with each other through well-defined boundaries, and in turn, increase developer productivity and happiness. 
So, we…