Deno Deploy build artifacts unexpectedly large (101 MB) despite assets <1 MB for react + vite SPA

Question

I’m deploying to Deno Deploy, and I noticed that the generated build artifacts grows with each buld. it was ~101 MB, now it is 150 MB. my actual assets are less than 1 MB. I use Deno + Vite + React (and i need node_modules)

It is not node_modules folder problem. I removed it after build and still got artifacts 101 MB. I also tried to create new branch with bare minimum and my artifacts jumped from 101 MB to 150 MB.

How can I control artifacts in deno deploy?

Logs from deno deploy:

Executing build command
Task  deno task build && rm -rf node_modules
Task build deno run -A --node-modules-dir npm:vite build
vite v6.3.5 building for production...
Generated route tree in 81ms
transforming...
✓ 955 modules transformed.
rendering chunks...
computing gzip size...
ist/assets/index-DRFX6L5t.js            377.20 kB │ gzip: 117.28 kB
dist/assets/Editor-CoIp3zDK.js   1,236.99 kB │ gzip: 415.69 kB
(!) Some chunks are larger than 500 kB after minification. Consider:
- Using dynamic import() to code-split the application
- Use build.rollupOptions.output.manualChunks to improve chunking: https://rollupjs.org/configuration-options/#output-manualchunks
- Adjust chunk size limit for this warning via build.chunkSizeWarningLimit.
✓ built in 5.82s
Caching dependencies for the entrypoint
Preparing build artifact
[===============================================|            ] 15700/19393  80%
[===========================================================-] 19393/19393 100%
Uploading build artifact (101 MB)
Build finished

deno.json

{
  "nodeModulesDir": "auto",
  "tasks": {
    "install": "deno install",
    "dev": "deno run -A --node-modules-dir npm:vite",
    "build": "deno run -A --node-modules-dir npm:vite build",
    "analyze": "deno run -A --node-modules-dir npm:vite build --mode analyze",
    "preview": "deno run -A --node-modules-dir npm:vite preview",
    "serve": "deno run --allow-net --allow-read jsr:@std/http@1/file-server dist/",
    "start": "deno run --allow-net --allow-read --allow-env --env main.ts"
  },
  "compilerOptions": {
    "lib": ["ES2021", "DOM", "DOM.Iterable"],
    "jsx": "react-jsx",
    "jsxImportSource": "react",
    "jsxImportSourceTypes": "@types/react"
  },
}

vite.config.ts

import { defineConfig } from "vite";
import deno from "@deno/vite-plugin";
import react from "@vitejs/plugin-react-swc";
import { tanstackRouter } from "@tanstack/router-plugin/vite";

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [
    deno(),
    tanstackRouter({
      target: "react",
      autoCodeSplitting: true,
    }),
    react(),
  ],
});

Arseniy-II · Accepted Answer · 2025-09-24 08:40:35Z

The issue was indeed with node_modules, but it turned out to be more complex than it first seemed.

Steps to fix

Create a new app
If Deno has accumulated artifacts, there doesn’t seem to be a documented way to clean them completely. Starting fresh with a new app is often the easiest path.
When installing in deno deploy remove node_modules from root directory and remove Deno cache as well
Run the following command:
```
deno run --allow-write --allow-read cleanup.ts && deno clean
```

Example `cleanup.ts` script

try {
  await Deno.remove("./node_modules", { recursive: true });
  console.log("✅ node_modules cleaned up");
} catch (error) {
  if (error instanceof Deno.errors.NotFound) {
    console.log("ℹ️ node_modules already removed");
  } else {
    console.warn("⚠️ node_modules cleanup failed", error);
  }
}

Now my application deployed in 17.3s instead of 2 minutes

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Deno Deploy build artifacts unexpectedly large (101 MB) despite assets <1 MB for react + vite SPA

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Steps to fix

Example `cleanup.ts` script

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1 Answer 1

Steps to fix

Example cleanup.ts script

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Example `cleanup.ts` script