Deployment

Build Output

vite build writes two clearly separated trees:

dist/
├── client/        — static frontend assets (HTML, JS, CSS, images)
├── server.js      — bundled server (sourcemap included)
└── server.js.map

Server-only code (database credentials, API keys, server-side libraries) lives in dist/server.js and must not be deployed to a public static host. Deploying only dist/client/ as the static root makes it impossible to accidentally leak the server bundle.

Running the Server

The server bundle is a fetch-handler module. Serve it with the srvx CLI:

srvx --prod dist/server.js

srvx picks up PORT, HOST, and other settings from environment variables.

Serving Static Assets

Static assets in dist/client/ should ideally be served by a dedicated static host — nginx, Caddy, or an S3-compatible bucket fronted by a CDN — for better caching, compression, and HTTP/2.

If you don’t need a separate static host, srvx can serve them too with the -s flag:

srvx --prod -s client dist/server.js

The path passed to -s is resolved relative to the directory containing the entry file (dist/), so client points at dist/client/. API routes are matched first; static files fall through when no API route handles the request.

Environment Variables

The production server does not load .env files. Env vars must come from the runtime: Docker env, systemd EnvironmentFile, or your PaaS config.