I have excluded node_modules from MSBUILD, but it still traverses the directory and takes forever

Question

At some point my project build started taking a long time. It's not a large project and it's directly related to the node_modules directory which is at the root of the project, and excluded from the project!

<PropertyGroup>
  <DefaultInstallExcludes>packages\**</DefaultInstallExcludes>
  <DefaultInstallExcludes>$(DefaultInstallExcludes);**\node_modules\**;node_modules\**</DefaultInstallExcludes> 
</PropertyGroup>

<ItemGroup>     
  <InstallInclude Include="**\*.ascx" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />
  <InstallInclude Include="**\*.asmx" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />
  <InstallInclude Include="**\*.css" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />
  <InstallInclude Include="**\*.html" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />
  <InstallInclude Include="**\*.aspx" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />
  <InstallInclude Include="**\*.js" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />
  <InstallInclude Include="**\images\**" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />      
</ItemGroup>

It seems it's excluding all the files properly, but it's still scanning the entire directory. How can I get it to completely ignore the node_modules folder entirely during a build? Tools version is 3.5. This used to take <30 seconds and at some point started taking ~10 minutes. VS Community 2019.

Answer 1

I think the issue is that InstallInclude is your custom item rather than the system item. And most of the files of node_modules are system items like None or Content .These are shown on the solution explorer and are scanned by msbuild.

The system build action are listed under this document .

What you did is make the new InstallInclude item did not contain the files from node_modules and packages . But the system item which contains node_modules folder, so it will always scan the folder.

Suggestion

You should exclude that folder from system Item.

For new-sdk projects, DefaultItemExcludes does work but it does not work for net framework projects.

If your project target to Net Framework , you should use any system item remove to remove those files.

Use this:

<ItemGroup>
      <Content Remove="node_modules\**" />
      <Compile Remove="node_modules\**" />
      <EmbeddedResource Remove="node_modules\**" />
      <None Remove="node_modules\**" />
      <Compile Remove=node_modules\**" />
      <TypeScriptCompile Remove="node_modules\**" />
    
    
      .... any system item
    
    </ItemGroup>



    <PropertyGroup>
      <DefaultInstallExcludes>packages\**</DefaultInstallExcludes>
      <DefaultInstallExcludes>$(DefaultInstallExcludes);**\node_modules\**;node_modules\**</DefaultInstallExcludes> 
    </PropertyGroup>
    
    <ItemGroup>     
      <InstallInclude Include="**\*.ascx" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />
      <InstallInclude Include="**\*.asmx" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />
      <InstallInclude Include="**\*.css" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />
      <InstallInclude Include="**\*.html" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />
      <InstallInclude Include="**\*.aspx" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />
      <InstallInclude Include="**\*.js" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />
      <InstallInclude Include="**\images\**" Exclude="$(DefaultInstallExcludes)" />      
    </ItemGroup>
    

Exclude from tsconfig files:

modify tsconfig.json :

{
  "compilerOptions": {
   ....
  },
  "include": [
   ...
  ],
  "exclude": [
    "node_modules"
  ],

.....
}

modify tsconfig.spec.json file:

{
  "extends": "./tsconfig.json",
  "compilerOptions": {
    "outDir": "./out-tsc/spec",
    "types": [
      "jasmine"
    ]
  },
  "files": [
   ....
  ],
  "include": [
    ....
  ],
  "exclude": [
    "node_modules/**/*"
  ]
  
}