Excluding Files from Vite Build

Vite will compile the files or subdirectories that are present in the project directory. In one case I was working on, I had a directory in the repository that I didn't want to be compiled. The publicDir directive also did not work. To solve this problem, I wrote a quick plugin that instead of excluding removed the files from the dist directory after the build.

To achieve this, add the following items in the vite.config.js:

import { defineConfig } from 'vite';
import * as path from 'path';
import fs from 'fs';

function removeUnnecessaryFiles() {
  return {
    name: 'remove-files',
    writeBundle (outputOptions, inputOptions) {
      const outDir = outputOptions.dir;
      // here I set the path in the output directory, in my case css
      const cssDir = path.resolve(outDir, 'css');
      fs.rm(cssDir, { recursive: true }, () => console.log(`Deleted ${cssDir}`))
    }
  }
}

export default defineConfig(({ command, mode }) => ({
  ## build code may appear here
  plugins: [
    # other plugins
    removeUnnecessaryFiles(),
  ],
}));

Now, at the end of each build, Vite will automatically remove unnecessary files from the output folder.