Vite - Build Tool That Doesn't Make You Wait

The numbers speak for themselves - Vite's dev server starts in milliseconds while Webpack takes 30+ seconds. But understanding how Vite achieves this speed helps you avoid the gotchas that'll bite you later.

Vite (pronounced "veet", French for fast) works by serving your source files directly to the browser using ES modules instead of bundling everything first. Your browser loads modules individually, which sounds terrible but actually works great until it doesn't.

How Vite Actually Works

The basic idea is pretty clever - modern browsers understand ES modules natively, so why bundle everything during development? Vite runs two separate processes:

Dev server: Serves your source files as-is, pre-processes dependencies with esbuild which is written in Go and stupidly fast. Your browser loads modules on-demand using native ES module support.

Production build: Falls back to Rollup which actually bundles everything properly but is slow as hell. Nobody cares because it only runs in CI.

This means your dev server starts basically instantly instead of 30+ seconds, but you'll pay for it in other ways.

When Vite Works Great

• Small to medium projects: The module loading overhead isn't noticeable
• Modern browsers only: You don't care about IE11 or old Safari versions
• Clean dependencies: All your npm packages play nice with ES modules
• Standard React/Vue: Using mainstream frameworks with official plugins

Most new projects fit this description, which is why everyone's switching from Create React App.

When Vite Will Ruin Your Day

Large codebases: With 1000+ modules, your browser makes 1000+ HTTP requests on page load. Chrome's network tab becomes a Christmas tree. Our current project hits 30+ minute build times because we have 3000+ components (architectural problem, not Vite's fault).

Legacy dependencies: Anything that assumes CommonJS or global variables. You'll spend hours in vite.config.js shimming broken packages with define, optimizeDeps, and other band-aids.

Docker/container networking: The dev server binds to localhost by default, which doesn't work inside containers. Add --host or watch it fail with ECONNREFUSED errors.

Hot reload randomly breaks: Circular imports break HMR and force full page reloads. The most common issue on GitHub is "HMR stopped working today" with no clear solution.

Memory usage explosion: My TypeScript project with Prisma eats 6GB RAM during dev. Prisma generates like 50MB of TypeScript definitions that Vite has to parse every fucking time you change a file.

Framework Support Reality Check

Vue: Obviously works perfectly since Evan You created both
React: Works well with @vitejs/plugin-react, though not quite as smooth as Vue
Svelte/Solid: Great support, these frameworks designed for Vite from the start
Angular: Experimental and painful, stick with Angular CLI
Anything else: You're a beta tester

Setting up Vite takes 2 minutes when everything works, 2 hours when it doesn't. Here's what breaks and how to fix it.

Installation and Setup

The happy path is stupidly simple:

npm create vite@latest my-app
cd my-app
npm install
npm run dev

Your dev server starts immediately on http://localhost:5173. If you see "Vite + React" or whatever framework you picked, you're golden. If not, welcome to dependency hell.

Node version gotcha: Vite 7 breaks on Node 18 - spent 2 hours debugging "ERR_REQUIRE_ESM" errors before realizing. We're stuck on Vite 6 because upgrading Node in our Docker containers would break 3 other services that nobody wants to touch.

Windows PATH limits: If your project path is deeply nested, Vite might fail with ENAMETOOLONG errors. Move your project closer to the drive root or use WSL2.

Hot Module Replacement Reality

HMR works great until it doesn't. When it works:

• CSS changes: Instant updates without page reload
• React components: State preserved, changes visible immediately
• Vue components: Template and style changes hot-reload perfectly
• TypeScript: Compiles and updates faster than you can blink

When HMR breaks (and it will):

• Circular imports: Creates infinite update loops, forces full page reload
• Global state mutations: Changes that affect multiple components confuse the HMR algorithm
• Syntax errors: Break HMR completely, require manual page refresh
• Large component trees: Sometimes HMR gives up and reloads everything

Fix: Restart the dev server. If that doesn't work, clear browser cache and try again. If you're still stuck, check for circular dependencies with madge - but first time this happened I blamed everything else for 2 hours before checking for circular imports.

TypeScript Integration

Vite doesn't type-check TypeScript by default - it just strips types using esbuild which is crazy fast but doesn't catch type errors.

For real type checking, add this to your build script:

tsc --noEmit && vite build

Memory usage warning: Large TypeScript projects with complex types eat RAM like crazy. Vue 3 + TypeScript + Volar language server = 8GB RAM gone. Found out the hard way when my laptop started thermal throttling during development.

Import path gotcha: Use relative imports (./components/Button) not absolute imports (src/components/Button) unless you configure path aliases in both tsconfig.json AND vite.config.js.

Asset Handling That Actually Works

Images and static files: Drop them in `/public` for direct access, or import them from `/src` for processing.

// Public folder - copied as-is
<img src=\"/logo.png\" />

// Src folder - processed and versioned
import logoUrl from './logo.png'
<img src={logoUrl} />

CSS imports: Just import CSS files directly. Vite handles the bundling.

import './styles.css'  // Global styles
import styles from './Button.module.css'  // CSS modules

Environment variables: Create .env.local and prefix variables with VITE_:

VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:3000
## NOT: API_URL=http://localhost:3000 (won't work)

Access them with import.meta.env.VITE_API_URL (not process.env).

Plugin Ecosystem (Use at Your Own Risk)

Most Rollup plugins work with Vite, but some popular ones are cursed:

Works great:

• @vitejs/plugin-react - Official React support, use this
• vite-plugin-eslint - Linting in dev server
• vite-plugin-pwa - Service worker generation

Proceed with caution:

• rollup-plugin-commonjs - Needed for old CommonJS packages, but slow
• @rollup/plugin-node-resolve - Required for Node.js polyfills, adds complexity

Avoid:

• Anything that modifies the file system during development
• Plugins that haven't been updated for Vite 6+
• Custom webpack loaders (obviously)

That's the setup process. Now the real question - is it worth switching from what you're using now?