Netlify Build is a great platform for running static site builds in conjunction with your Git workflow and Headless CMS content updates (via Webhooks). It makes running cloud-based builds of JavaScript Static Site Generators very slick, but it's not without its pitfalls.
Many of the popular generators use Yarn as a package manager which can be
configured via Netlify's
netlify.toml
configuration file, like so:-
# netlify.toml
[build.environment]
YARN_VERSION = "1.17.3"
NODE_ENV = "production"
Note: the "Yarn approved" method of specifying the required version is via
the
yarn policies set-version command.
Running the build step in an environment other than local development had me
wondering whether to install packages as dependencies or devDependencies.
With the environment variable NODE_ENV set to "production" Yarn will only
install dependencies specified in the dependencies section of the
package.json file, and not those within devDependencies.
Perhaps NODE_ENV could be set to "production" within the scope of the build
command? For example:-
{
"scripts": {
"build": "NODE_ENV=production ..."
}
}
The cleanest solution (in my humble opinion) is to set the
--production flag
to false, like so:-
# netlify.toml
[build.environment]
YARN_VERSION = "1.17.3"
YARN_FLAGS = "--production=false"
NODE_ENV = "production"
You can find out more about configuring build environment variables within the Netlify documentation.
