Excessive dependencies in preview server

[hillac]

Not sure if this is really a question or not, but I upgraded to the latest version and needed to install the new preview server, and npm installed ~300 packages more than the old server. Seems really excessive, especially since there doesnt seem to be a huge change in the server itself when it got stripped out into its own package. Are there maybe dev dependencies accidentally being installed?

So i run npm ci && npm dedupe while having react email 4.0.17 installed (which includes a preview server),
Then, I run npm i -D @react-email/preview-server react-email@latest and get added 316 packages, removed 3 packages. Running dedupe removes 28 packages, but still +288 packages.

[gabrielmfern]

The change was just organizational, since before we had all preview server dependencies as devDependencies of react-email, which was very confusing for contributors. Now, we have them as dependencies in @react-email/preview-server, which is why they are now installed, but since they are dependencies they get installed during development for users as well.

I suppose this is the trade-off for the change of architecture we made, but for now I don't think we can make a change to improve this much, but this shouldn't affect bundle sizes or dependencies installed in npm install --save-prod.

Definitely open to ideas.

[hillac]

Got it. One small annoyance is It just makes my ci pipelines slower because I need Dev dependancies for them. I guess I just need to move it to optional deps instead, and do npm ci --omit=optional

If they were Dev dependencies in react-email, shouldn't they still be Dev dependencies for the preview server so they dont get installed by the end users? I thought that's the point of Dev dependencies, separating out packages the end user of the published package doesn't need.

[gabrielmfern]

@hillac They were dev dependencies because react-email was generally installed as a dependency before, but it was very confusing for contributors to understand that when coming in with the knowledge they already had of working on Next.js apps.

[hillac]

But if the preview server worked fine for me (an end user) without these extra dependencies in 4.0.17, then they shouldn't be installed for me now either, even with the preview server in its own package. They don't need to be installed for me to run the published package, so they should be devDependencies in @react-email/preview-server. I don't think it should matter how I'm meant to install the preview server in my package, dependencies or devDependencies.

I get in front end people usually use the distinction for build tools vs imported packages, but I think if your final published bundle doesn't rely on a package, it should be in devdeps.

[hillac]

Could we change it so anything that used to be a dev dep before the pr #2182 goes back to being one?

At the very least all the @type/ packages should definitely be dev dependencies. I can make a pr if you're ok with it.

[olehrez]

Pulling a full Next.js app (~300MB of deps) by default feels wrong. Most users just want to render emails, not install a dev server.

IMO preview-related deps should not be regular dependencies. Options that would already be a big improvement:
• move heavy stuff (next, etc.) to optionalDependencies
• or make @react-email/preview-server fully opt-in (install only when running email dev)
• at the very least keep runtime vs preview clearly separated so CI / prod installs can skip it