Huge number of files generated for every Angular project

Question

I wanted to start a simple hello world app for Angular.

When I followed the instructions in the official quickstart the installation created 32,000 files in my proje

Answer 1

As several people already mentioned: All files in your node_modules directory (NPM location for packages) are part of your project dependencies (So-called direct dependencies). As an addition to that, your dependencies can also have their own dependencies and so on, etc. (So-called transitive dependencies). Several ten thousand files are nothing special.

Because you are only allowed to upload 10'000 files (See comments), I would go with a bundler engine. This engine will bundle all your JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. and create a single bundle (or more if you specify them). Your index.html will load this bundle and that's it.

I am a fan of webpack, so my webpack solution will create an application bundle and a vendor bundle (For the full working application see here https://github.com/swaechter/project-collection/tree/master/web-angular2-example):

index.html

    
    


Applikation wird geladen, bitte warten...

webpack.config.js

var webpack = require("webpack");
var path = require('path');

var ProvidePlugin = require('webpack/lib/ProvidePlugin');
var CommonsChunkPlugin = require('webpack/lib/optimize/CommonsChunkPlugin');
var UglifyJsPlugin = require('webpack/lib/optimize/UglifyJsPlugin');

/*
 * Configuration
 */
module.exports = {
    devtool: 'source-map',
    debug: true,

    entry: {
        'main': './app/main.ts'
    },

    // Bundle configuration
    output: {
        path: root('dist'),
        filename: '[name].bundle.js',
        sourceMapFilename: '[name].map',
        chunkFilename: '[id].chunk.js'
    },

    // Include configuration
    resolve: {
        extensions: ['', '.ts', '.js', '.css', '.html']
    },

    // Module configuration
    module: {
        preLoaders: [
            // Lint all TypeScript files
            {test: /\.ts$/, loader: 'tslint-loader'}
        ],
        loaders: [
            // Include all TypeScript files
            {test: /\.ts$/, loader: 'ts-loader'},

            // Include all HTML files
            {test: /\.html$/, loader: 'raw-loader'},

            // Include all CSS files
            {test: /\.css$/, loader: 'raw-loader'},
        ]
    },

    // Plugin configuration
    plugins: [
        // Bundle all third party libraries
        new CommonsChunkPlugin({name: 'vendor', filename: 'vendor.bundle.js', minChunks: Infinity}),

        // Uglify all bundles
        new UglifyJsPlugin({compress: {warnings: false}}),
    ],

    // Linter configuration
    tslint: {
        emitErrors: false,
        failOnHint: false
    }
};

// Helper functions
function root(args) {
    args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 0);
    return path.join.apply(path, [__dirname].concat(args));
}

Advantages:

• Full build line (TS linting, compiling, minification, etc.)
• 3 files for deployment --> Only a few Http requests

Disadvantages:

• Higher build time
• Not the best solution for Http 2 projects (See disclaimer)

Disclaimer: This is a good solution for Http 1.*, because it minimizes the overhead for each Http request. You only have a request for your index.html and each bundle - but not for 100 - 200 files. At the moment, this is the way to go.

Http 2, on the other hand, tries to minimize the Http overhead, so it's based on a stream protocol. This stream is able to communicate in both direction (Client <--> Server) and as a reason of that, a more intelligent resource loading is possible (You only load the required files). The stream eliminates much of the Http overhead (Less Http round trips).

But it's the same as with IPv6: It will take a few years until people will really use Http 2