[web] try out Deno // was: Dismal node performance

[akauppi]

Multipass (I'm running 1.15.0) has problems with native mount performance on Macs.

One way you will see this affect is a plain SvelteKit project:

With node_modules mounted

$ npm run dev
...
VITE v6.1.1  ready in 23280 ms

With local file system

$ npm run dev
VITE v6.1.1  ready in 1493 ms

This was done by running the SvelteKit template within a mounted project folder. Unfortunately, npm does not allow moving node_modules to another location (trick I use in Rust development, very successfully).

The local version was run by:

$ cp -R Pulu Pulu.2
$ cd Pulu.2
$ npm run dev

..i.e. one-to-one replicate of the files, but running off local (VM internal) folder.

Repeated runs show similar speeds.

The node_modules has ~260MB of files (most small, as npm modules are..)

Solutions

• try pnpm, instead of npm

Note: node can be made to find its modules elsewhere (see NODE_PATH), but npm install (local mode) goes after a fixed node_modules in the working directory. I tried hoops. Many. Failed.

Summary

Launching an npm based web project is 17x slower from a mounted (--type native) path, compared to a path within the VM's file system.

[akauppi]

Tried pnpm.

VITE v6.1.1 ready in 40087 ms

Yeah.

[akauppi]

The current solution of using either tmpfs or --bind mount for node_modules is adequate, but requires that setup to be renewed at each restart of the particular VM instance.

•  try out Deno, which

  [...] uses a global cache with hard links, like pnpm, to improve speed and reduce storage usage across projects.