NODE_ENV=production with react-app-rewired

Question

I have installed react-app-rewired as dev dependency according to docs.

  "devDependencies": {
    //...
    "react-app-rewired": "^2.1.8",
  },

Now I'd like to make a production build. When I use

NODE_ENV=production yarn install

consequent yarn build says that react-app-rewired: not found (because it is in dev only).

1. Does yarn build implies production under the hood?
2. If so, why do I need all the dev dependencies to be installed to make a production build?
3. Should I get rid of NODE_ENV or move react-app-rewired to production then?

Answer 1

When making the production build (when you need to transform your code, generate built assets, etc.), you usually need to have the dev dependencies installed since the dev dependencies contain the build tools needed to transform/compile the code into production code. When running the actual production code that is built from running yarn build, then you'd only need to have the production dependencies installed.

So, before the app is actually built, you need to run yarn install without NODE_ENV=production. Once the app is built (i.e. once you've ran yarn build and you have all the code transformed, all artifacts generated, etc.), then you'd re-run yarn install but with production mode turned on (NODE_ENV=production yarn install) so yarn only installs the dependencies in the dependencies section of package.json (these are the dependencies that your transformed code would depend on, whereas the build tools like react-app-rewired are only needed at build-time).