Build error when NODE_ENV=production

[mykhailo-monchak]

Hello,

I have scaffolded a tiny app and hosted it on Render.com.
Everything looked great until I decided to set NODE_ENV=production in the hosting environment variables. After that the build crashed, see the error below.

It wasn't expected since according to the documentation vite build is running in production, so what's the difference if I'm setting the env var explicitly?

ERROR:

== Common ways to troubleshoot your deploy: https://docs.render.com/troubleshooting-deploys
== Build failed 😞
vite.config.ts(9,37): error TS2580: Cannot find name 'process'. Do you need to install type definitions for node? Try npm i --save-dev @types/node.
vite.config.ts(3,18): error TS2307: Cannot find module 'vite-plugin-svgr' or its corresponding type declarations.
vite.config.ts(2,19): error TS2307: Cannot find module '@vitejs/plugin-react' or its corresponding type declarations.
vite.config.ts(1,30): error TS2307: Cannot find module 'vite' or its corresponding type declarations.
Try npm i --save-dev @types/react-dom if it exists or add a new declaration (.d.ts) file containing declare module 'react-dom/client';
src/index.tsx(2,28): error TS7016: Could not find a declaration file for module 'react-dom/client'. '/opt/render/project/src/node_modules/react-dom/client.js' implicitly has an 'any' type.
src/features/user/userSlice.ts(30,22): error TS2503: Cannot find namespace 'NodeJS'.
...
...
...
src/configs/config.ts(1,33): error TS2339: Property 'env' does not exist on type 'ImportMeta'.
tsc -b && vite build
[email protected] build
== Running build command 'npm run build'...
found 0 vulnerabilities
run npm fund for details
4 packages are looking for funding
up to date, audited 79 packages in 3s
found 0 vulnerabilities
run npm fund for details
4 packages are looking for funding
up to date, audited 79 packages in 3s
== Docs on specifying a bun version: https://render.com/docs/bun-version
== Using Bun version (default)
== Docs on specifying a Node.js version: https://render.com/docs/node-version
== Using Node.js version 22.11.0 via /opt/render/project/src/package.json
== Requesting Node.js version >=22.11.0 <23.0.0
== Installing dependencies with npm...
== Transferred 116MB in 8s. Extraction took 4s.
== Downloading cache...
== Checking out commit ... in branch prod
== Cloning from https://github.com/...

[sapphi-red]

If you set NODE_ENV=production before npm install, npm does not install devDependencies.
https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v8/commands/npm-install#:~:text=With%20the%20%2D%2Dproduction,production%3Dfalse.

Vite sets NODE_ENV=production in build when NODE_ENV is not set, so probably you don't need to set it manually.