How to decrease prod bundle size?

Question

I have a simple app, initialized by angular-cli.

It display some pages relative to 3 routes. I have 3 components. On one of this page I use lodash and Angular 2 HTTP modules to get some data (using RxJS Observables, map and subscribe). I display these elements using a simple *ngFor.

But, despite the fact my app is really simple, I get a huge (in my opinion) bundle package and maps. I don't talk about gzip versions though but size before gzipping. This question is just a general recommendations inquiry.

Some tests results:

ng build

Hash: 8efac7d6208adb8641c1 Time: 10129ms chunk {0} main.bundle.js, main.bundle.map (main) 18.7 kB {3} [initial] [rendered]

chunk {1} styles.bundle.css, styles.bundle.map, styles.bundle.map (styles) 155 kB {4} [initial] [rendered]

chunk {2} scripts.bundle.js, scripts.bundle.map (scripts) 128 kB {4} [initial] [rendered]

chunk {3} vendor.bundle.js, vendor.bundle.map (vendor) 3.96 MB [initial] [rendered]

chunk {4} inline.bundle.js, inline.bundle.map (inline) 0 bytes [entry] [rendered]

Wait: 10Mb vendor bundle package for such a simple app?

ng build --prod

Hash: 09a5f095e33b2980e7cc Time: 23455ms chunk {0} main.6273b0f04a07a1c2ad6c.bundle.js, main.6273b0f04a07a1c2ad6c.bundle.map (main) 18.3 kB {3} [initial] [rendered]

chunk {1} styles.bfdaa4d8a4eb2d0cb019.bundle.css, styles.bfdaa4d8a4eb2d0cb019.bundle.map, styles.bfdaa4d8a4eb2d0cb019.bundle.map (styles) 154 kB {4} [initial] [rendered]

chunk {2} scripts.c5b720a078e5464ec211.bundle.js, scripts.c5b720a078e5464ec211.bundle.map (scripts) 128 kB {4} [initial] [rendered]

chunk {3} vendor.07af2467307e17d85438.bundle.js, vendor.07af2467307e17d85438.bundle.map (vendor) 3.96 MB [initial] [rendered]

chunk {4} inline.a345391d459797f81820.bundle.js, inline.a345391d459797f81820.bundle.map (inline) 0 bytes [entry] [rendered]

Wait again: such a similar vendor bundle size for prod?

ng build --prod --aot

Hash: 517e4425ff872bbe3e5b Time: 22856ms chunk {0} main.95eadabace554e3c2b43.bundle.js, main.95eadabace554e3c2b43.bundle.map (main) 130 kB {3} [initial] [rendered]

chunk {1} styles.e53a388ae1dd2b7f5434.bundle.css, styles.e53a388ae1dd2b7f5434.bundle.map, styles.e53a388ae1dd2b7f5434.bundle.map (styles) 154 kB {4} [initial] [rendered]

chunk {2} scripts.e5c2c90547f3168a7564.bundle.js, scripts.e5c2c90547f3168a7564.bundle.map (scripts) 128 kB {4} [initial] [rendered]

chunk {3} vendor.41a6c1f57136df286f14.bundle.js, vendor.41a6c1f57136df286f14.bundle.map (vendor) 2.75 MB [initial] [rendered]

chunk {4} inline.97c0403c57a46c6a7920.bundle.js, inline.97c0403c57a46c6a7920.bundle.map (inline) 0 bytes [entry] [rendered]

ng build --aot

Hash: 040cc91df4df5ffc3c3f Time: 11011ms chunk {0} main.bundle.js, main.bundle.map (main) 130 kB {3} [initial] [rendered]

chunk {1} styles.bundle.css, styles.bundle.map, styles.bundle.map (styles) 155 kB {4} [initial] [rendered]

chunk {2} scripts.bundle.js, scripts.bundle.map (scripts) 128 kB {4} [initial] [rendered]

chunk {3} vendor.bundle.js, vendor.bundle.map (vendor) 2.75 MB [initial] [rendered]

chunk {4} inline.bundle.js, inline.bundle.map (inline) 0 bytes [entry] [rendered]

So a few questions for deploying my app on prod:

• Why are the vendor bundles so huge?
• Is tree shaking properly used by angular-cli?
• How to improve this bundle size?
• Are the .map files required?
• Are the testing features included in bundles? I don't need them in prod.
• Generic question: what are the recommanded tools to pack for prod? Maybe angular-cli (using Webpack in the background) is not the best option? Can we do better?

I searched many discussions on Stack Overflow, but I haven't found any generic question.

Answer 1

Update February 2020

Since this answer got a lot of traction, I thought it would be best to update it with newer Angular optimizations:

1. As another answerer said, ng build --prod --build-optimizer is a good option for people using less than Angular v5. For newer versions, this is done by default with ng build --prod
2. Another option is to use module chunking/lazy loading to better split your application into smaller chunks
3. Ivy rendering engine comes by default in Angular 9, it offers better bundle sizes
4. Make sure your 3rd party deps are tree shakeable. If you're not using Rxjs v6 yet, you should be.
5. If all else fails, use a tool like webpack-bundle-analyzer to see what is causing bloat in your modules
6. Check if you files are gzipped

---

Some claims that using AOT compilation can reduce the vendor bundle size to 250kb. However, in BlackHoleGalaxy's example, he uses AOT compilation and is still left with a vendor bundle size of 2.75MB with ng build --prod --aot, 10x larger than the supposed 250kb. This is not out of the norm for angular2 applications, even if you are using v4.0. 2.75MB is still too large for anyone who really cares about performance, especially on a mobile device.

There are a few things you can do to help the performance of your application:

1) AOT & Tree Shaking (angular-cli does this out of the box). With Angular 9 AOT is by default on prod and dev environment.

2) Using Angular Universal A.K.A. server-side rendering (not in cli)

3) Web Workers (again, not in cli, but a very requested feature)
see: https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/issues/2305

4) Service Workers
see: https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/issues/4006

You may not need all of these in a single application, but these are some of the options that are currently present for optimizing Angular performance. I believe/hope Google is aware of the out of the box shortcomings in terms of performance and plans to improve this in the future.

Here is a reference that talks more in depth about some of the concepts i mentioned above:

https://medium.com/@areai51/the-4-stages-of-perf-tuning-for-your-angular2-app-922ce5c1b294

Answer 2

Use latest angular cli version and use command ng build --prod --build-optimizer It will definitely reduce the build size for prod env.

This is what the build optimizer does under the hood:

The build optimizer has two main jobs. First, we are able to mark parts of your application as pure,this improves the tree shaking provided by the existing tools, removing additional parts of your application that aren’t needed.

The second thing the build optimizer does is to remove Angular decorators from your application’s runtime code. Decorators are used by the compiler, and aren’t needed at runtime and can be removed. Each of these jobs decrease the size of your JavaScript bundles, and increase the boot speed of your application for your users.

Note : One update for Angular 5 and up, the ng build --prod automatically take care of above process :)

Answer 3

Lodash can contribute a bug chunk of code to your bundle depending on how you import from it. For example:

// includes the entire package (very large)
import * as _ from 'lodash';

// depending on your buildchain, may still include the entire package
import { flatten } from 'lodash';

// imports only the code needed for `flatten`
import flatten from 'lodash-es/flatten'

Personally I still wanted smaller footprints from my utility functions. E.g. flatten can contribute up to 1.2K to your bundle, after minimization. So I've been building up a collection of simplified lodash functions. My implementation of flatten contributes around 50 bytes. You can check it out here to see if it works for you: https://github.com/simontonsoftware/micro-dash

Answer 4

Firstly, vendor bundles are huge simply because Angular 2 relies on a lot of libraries. Minimum size for Angular 2 app is around 500KB (250KB in some cases, see bottom post).
Tree shaking is properly used by angular-cli.
Do not include .map files, because used only for debugging. Moreover, if you use hot replacement module, remove it to lighten vendor.

To pack for production, I personnaly use Webpack (and angular-cli relies on it too), because you can really configure everything for optimization or debugging.
If you want to use Webpack, I agree it is a bit tricky a first view, but see tutorials on the net, you won't be disappointed.
Else, use angular-cli, which get the job done really well.

Using Ahead-of-time compilation is mandatory to optimize apps, and shrink Angular 2 app to 250KB.

Here is a repo I created (github.com/JCornat/min-angular) to test minimal Angular bundle size, and I obtain 384kB. I am sure there is easy way to optimize it.

Talking about big apps, using the AngularClass/angular-starter configuration, the same as in the repo above, my bundle size for big apps (150+ components) went from 8MB (4MB without map files) to 580kB.

Answer 5

The following solution assumes you are serving your dist/ folder using nodejs. Please use the following app.js in root level

const express = require('express'),http = require('http'),path = require('path'),compression = require('compression');

const app = express();

app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'dist')));
app.use(compression()) //compressing dist folder 
app.get('*', (req, res) => {
  res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, 'dist/index.html'));
})

const port = process.env.PORT || '4201';
app.set('port', port);

const server = http.createServer(app);
server.listen(port, () => console.log('Running at port ' + port))

Make sure you install dependencies;

npm install compression --save
npm install express --save;

Now build the app

ng build --prod --build-optimizer

If you want to further compress the build say reduce 300kb(approx) from , then follow the below process;

Create a folder called vendor inside the src folder and inside vendor folder create a file rxjs.ts and paste the below code in it;

export {Subject} from 'rxjs/Subject';
export {Observable} from 'rxjs/Observable';
export {Subscription} from 'rxjs/Subscription';

And then add the follwing in the tsconfig.json file in your angular-cli application. Then in the compilerOptions , add the following json;

"paths": {
      "rxjs": [
        "./vendor/rxjs.ts"
      ]
    }

This will make your build size way too smaller. In my project I reduced the size from 11mb to 1mb. Hope it helps

Answer 6

One thing I wish to share is how imported libraries increase the size of the dist. I had angular2-moment package imported, whereas I could do all the date time formatting I required using the standard DatePipe exported from @angular/common.

With Angular2-Moment "angular2-moment": "^1.6.0",

chunk {0} polyfills.036982dc15bb5fc67cb8.bundle.js (polyfills) 191 kB {4} [initial] [rendered] chunk {1} main.e7496551a26816427b68.bundle.js (main) 2.2 MB {3} [initial] [rendered] chunk {2} styles.056656ed596d26ba0192.bundle.css (styles) 69 bytes {4} [initial] [rendered] chunk {3} vendor.62c2cfe0ca794a5006d1.bundle.js (vendor) 3.84 MB [initial] [rendered] chunk {4} inline.0b9c3de53405d705e757.bundle.js (inline) 0 bytes [entry] [rendered]

After removing Angular2-moment and using DatePipe instead

chunk {0} polyfills.036982dc15bb5fc67cb8.bundle.js (polyfills) 191 kB {4} [initial] [rendered] chunk {1} main.f2b62721788695a4655c.bundle.js (main) 2.2 MB {3} [initial] [rendered] chunk {2} styles.056656ed596d26ba0192.bundle.css (styles) 69 bytes {4} [initial] [rendered] chunk {3} vendor.e1de06303258c58c9d01.bundle.js (vendor) 3.35 MB [initial] [rendered] chunk {4} inline.3ae24861b3637391ba70.bundle.js (inline) 0 bytes [entry] [rendered]

Note the vendor bundle has reduced half a Megabyte!

Point is it is worth checking what angular standard packages can do even if you are already familiar with an external lib.

Answer 7

Another way to reduce bundle, is to serve GZIP instead of JS. We went from 2.6mb to 543ko.

https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_deflate.html

Answer 8

This did reduce the size in my case:

ng build --prod --build-optimizer --optimization.

For Angular 5+ ng-build --prod does this by default. Size after running this command reduced from 1.7MB to 1.2MB, but not enough for my production purpose.

I work on facebook messenger platform and messenger apps need to be lesser than 1MB to run on messenger platform. Been trying to figure out a solution for effective tree shaking but still no luck.

Answer 9

Its works 100% ng build --prod --aot --build-optimizer --vendor-chunk=true

Answer 10

If you have run ng build --prod - you shouldn't have vendor files at all.

If I run just ng build - I get these files:

The total size of the folder is ~14MB. Waat! :D

But if I run ng build --prod - I get these files:

The total size of the folder is 584K.

One and the same code. I have enabled Ivy in both cases. Angular is 8.2.13.

So - I guess you didn't add --prod to your build command?

Answer 11

If you are using Angular 8+ and you want to reduce the size of the bundle you can use Ivy. Ivy comes as the default view engine in Angular 9 Just go to src/tsconfig.app.json and add the angularCompilerOptions parameter, for example:

{
  "extends": ...,
  "compilerOptions":...,
  "exclude": ...,

/* add this one */ 
  "angularCompilerOptions": {
    "enableIvy": true
  }
}

Answer 12

Taken from the angular docs v9 (https://angular.io/guide/workspace-config#alternate-build-configurations):

By default, a production configuration is defined, and the ng build command has --prod option that builds using this configuration. The production configuration sets defaults that optimize the app in a number of ways, such as bundling files, minimizing excess whitespace, removing comments and dead code, and rewriting code to use short, cryptic names ("minification").

Additionally you can compress all your deployables with @angular-builders/custom-webpack:browser builder where your custom webpack.config.js looks like that:

module.exports = {
  entry: {
  },
  output: {
    path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist'),
    filename: '[name].[hash].js'
  },
  plugins: [
    new CompressionPlugin({
      deleteOriginalAssets: true,
    })
  ]
};

Afterwards you will have to configure your web server to serve compressed content e.g. with nginx you have to add to your nginx.conf:

server {
    gzip on;
    gzip_types      text/plain application/xml;
    gzip_proxied    no-cache no-store private expired auth;
    gzip_min_length 1000;
    ...
}

In my case the dist folder shrank from 25 to 5 mb after just using the --prod in ng build and then further shrank to 1.5mb after compression.

Answer 13

I have a angular 5 + spring boot app(application.properties 1.3+) with help of compression(link attached below) was able to reduce the size of main.bundle.ts size from 2.7 MB to 530 KB.

Also by default --aot and --build-optimizer are enabled with --prod mode you need not specify those separately.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/28216983/9491345

Answer 14

Check you have configuration named "production" for ng build --prod, since it is shorthand for ng build --configuration=production No answer solved my problem, because the problem was sitting right in front of the screen. I think this might be quite common... I've internationalized the app with i18n renaming all configurations to e.g. production-en. Then I built with ng build --prod assuming, that the default optimization is used and should be close to optimal, but in fact just ng build has been executed resulting in 7mb bundle instead of 250kb.