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Nikola Perišić
Nikola Perišić

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Optimize Vite Build Time: A Comprehensive Guide

Vite is a modern build tool that has quickly become one of the most popular choices for front-end development, particularly for React, Vue, and other JavaScript frameworks.

Its fast development server and optimized build process make it a great choice for many projects. However, as your project grows, build times can start to increase, especially during production builds.

In this article, we’ll go through several strategies to help you optimize Vite’s build time, from configuration tweaks to leveraging plugins and optimizing your codebase.


1. Use vite's built-in features

a) Enable the build.target option

The build.target option allows you to specify which browsers you are targeting. By default, Vite targets modern browsers (ES modules), but you can adjust this based on your project needs. If you’re targeting modern browsers only, you can reduce build time by excluding legacy support.

Here’s an example:

// vite.config.js
export default {
  build: {
    target: 'esnext', // Target modern JavaScript only
  },
};
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b) Disable sourcemaps for production

Generating sourcemaps during production builds can slow down the build process. If you don’t need sourcemaps in production, you can disable them:

// vite.config.js
export default {
  build: {
    sourcemap: false, // Disable sourcemaps in production
  },
};
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c) Enable minify and terserOptions

Vite uses esbuild to minify your code. While esbuild is incredibly fast, you can improve the build performance further by configuring its minification settings to optimize output.

// vite.config.js
export default {
  build: {
    minify: 'esbuild', // Enable esbuild for minification
    terserOptions: {
      compress: {
        drop_console: true, // Remove console logs for production
      },
    },
  },
};
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2. Improve caching and use parallelism

One of the reasons Vite is so fast is its aggressive use of caching. However, you can still further optimize it by enabling persistent cache and parallelizing some build tasks.

a) Enable persistent cache

Vite caches build results to avoid recompiling unchanged files. By default, caching is used, but you can ensure persistence across builds by enabling it explicitly:

// vite.config.js
export default {
  build: {
    cacheDir: '.vite', // Make sure the cache is stored in a persistent location
  },
};
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b) Parallelize build tasks

Vite uses esbuild internally, which is already optimized for multi-threading. If you have heavy plugins or transformations, enabling parallelism will speed things up:

// vite.config.js
export default {
  plugins: [
    // Example with a plugin that supports parallel processing
    myPlugin({ parallel: true }),
  ],
};
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3. Split code and optimize your bundles

Code splitting is a technique to reduce the size of your bundles and improve build time. Vite supports automatic code splitting out-of-the-box, but you can configure it further.

a) Use dynamic imports

By using dynamic import() for loading specific modules, you can split your code into smaller chunks that are loaded on demand. This reduces the initial bundle size and can speed up both build and load times.

// Example of dynamic import for code splitting
const SomeComponent = React.lazy(() => import('./SomeComponent'));
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b) Configure manual code splitting - Personally, I use this a lot

If you need more control over how your code is split, you can configure manual chunks in Vite:

// vite.config.js
export default {
  build: {
    rollupOptions: {
      output: {
        manualChunks(id) {
          if (id.includes('node_modules')) {
            return 'vendor';
          }
        },
      },
    },
  },
};
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This allows you to split third-party dependencies into a separate chunk, making the build process more efficient.

4. Use vite plugin for image optimization: vite-plugin-imagemin

Images can be a large part of your build output. You can use vite-plugin-imagemin to optimize your images automatically during the build process, reducing both the size of your build and its build time.

Install the plugin and modify your vite.config.ts file:

// vite.config.js
import ViteImagemin from 'vite-plugin-imagemin';

export default {
  plugins: [ViteImagemin()],
};
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And that would be it for today :)

If you find this article helpful please leave a reaction. Thank you!

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