Passing targets in as a dependency and making sure they output something useful and meaningful to be consumed by next target - monorepo

Question

I am trying to get a plugin to use run-commands and I want it to run and execute a dependent task and pass the result to my command. In this case, I want to have a dependent target start up a webserver and keep it running.
I have tried to do the following and nx graph shows the right DAG but I am not seeing the output I want.
"executor": "nx:run-commands",
"options": {
"command": "./my-cli-tool --arg={frontendApp:serve}"
},
"dependsOn": [
"frontendApp:serve"
]
I know that in a monorepo tool like bazel, passing around the target like //frontendApp:serve would do what I am expecting here so I am guessing there should be a way to do this in nx.
Update: To help with debugging.
If the dependency is running, it is failing silently. I can run it individually, e.g. npx nx run frontendApp:serve. I can't see the port starting up and being taken so if something is happening, its happening silently.

Answer 1

dependsOn configuration looks a little different. It's in the docs here:
https://nx.dev/reference/project-configuration#dependson
Basically, you need have a local target which invokes the target in the other project.
{
"foo": {
"executor": "nx:run-commands",
"options": {
"command": "./my-cli-tool --arg={frontendApp:serve}"
},
"dependsOn": ["serve"]
},
"serve": {
"executor": "nx:run-commands",
"options": {
"command": "nx run frontendApp:serve"
}
}
}
Another option is to use Angular DevKit's allOf or concat executors for running multiple things at once:
"serve-with-graphql": {
"executor": "#angular-devkit/architect:allOf",
"options": {
"targets": [
{
"target": "web:serve"
},
{
"target": "graphql:dev-server"
}
]
}
},
https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/blob/main/packages/angular_devkit/architect/builders/builders.json#L14-L23
allOf runs each target at the same time
concat runs them serially