$ cat test.md
Test
TL;DR
Builds are slow where you aren't looking. Profile first, turn on a filesystem cache, swap in a faster compiler, then delete what you no longer need. 70s became 600ms.
When I joined, a production build took seventy seconds. Nobody complained, because nobody remembered it being faster. That is how slow builds survive: they become weather.
Measure before you guess
The first step was a flame graph, not a hunch. Most of the time sat in two places, and neither was where we had been looking.
module.exports = {
cache: { type: 'filesystem' },
module: { rules: [swcLoader] },
}Caching and a faster compiler got us most of the way. The rest was deleting things we no longer needed.
What I would do again
- Write the number down before touching anything.
- Change one thing at a time and re-measure.
- Keep the fast path fast: a
watchmode is worth more than a clever build.