▣ Nuxt Build Cache

Important

This is a highly experimental project. Use at your own risk in production!

✨ Quick Start

npx nuxi module add nuxt-build-cache

💡 What does it do?

By enabling this module, after a nuxt build, Nuxt collects build artifacts from .nuxt/ dir into a tar file. On subsequent builds, if none of the relevant dependencies or your codes change, Nuxt will avoid the Vite/Webpack build step and simply restore the previous build results.

This is particularly useful to speed up the CI/CD process when only prerendered content (from a CMS for example) or server routes are changed and can significantly speed up build speeds (up to 2x!). This is a similar feature we introduced in Nuxt 2.

How does the module determine if a new build is required?

We generate a hash of the current state during the build from various sources using unjs/ohash and then use this hash to store the build artifacts. (By default in node_modules/.cache/nuxt/build/{hash}/). This way each cache is unique to the project state it was built from.

The hash is generated from your code and all Nuxt layers (that are not in node_modules):

• Loaded config
• Files in known Nuxt directories (pages/, layouts/, app.vue, ...)
• Known project root files (package.json, .nuxtrc, .npmrc, package manager lock-file, ...)

Note

File hashes are based on their size and content digest (murmurHash v3)

Important

Config layer hashes will be generated from the loaded value. If you have a config like { date: new Date() }, the cache will not work! But if you update a runtime value in nuxt.config (like an environment variable), it will be used as a source for your build hashes 👍

⚙️ Environment variables

• NUXT_DISABLE_BUILD_CACHE: Disable the module entirely
• NUXT_IGNORE_BUILD_CACHE: Skip restoring cache even if it exists