Deploy very slow using NodeJs

[kimmy-wang]

14 minutes to build, 25 minutes to deploy and it's not over.

[github-actions]

This issue is idle because it has been open for 14 days with no activity.

[rabollin]

Triaged and added to backlog.

[dennisameling]

I was also running into this. Deployments were taking more than 30 mins to complete. The reason is that Kudu takes the ZIP it receives, then extracts it, and copies all files into /home/site/wwwroot. Since Node's node_modules folder often contains tens of thousands of files, this causes things to be super slow.

Command: "/home/site/deployments/tools/deploy.sh"
Handling Basic Web Site deployment.
Kudu sync from: '/tmp/zipdeploy/extracted' to: '/home/site/wwwroot'
Copying file: '.env'
Copying file: '.env.test'
Copying file: '.eslintrc.js'
Copying file: '.funcignore'
Copying file: '.gitattributes'
Copying file: '.gitignore'
....
Omitting next output lines...
Processed 1162 files...
Processed 2332 files...
....

Luckily there's a setting that allows you to start the app directly from the ZIP package rather than all this unzipping and copying: WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE="1". You can set it by doing:

az webapp config appsettings set --resource-group <group-name> --name <app-name> --settings WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE="1"

After changing this setting, it took less than a minute for my app to be deployed!! 🚀

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/deploy-run-package#enable-running-from-package

[sven5]

@dennisameling You should mention that WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE="1" only works for App Services that runs on a Windows plan. This is no solution for Linux plans, is it?

[oshihirii]

I am new to Azure web apps, and when I push to GitHub it takes 30 minutes for the 'workflow' to complete.

The workflow file was created automatically by Azure when creating the Web App a few weeks ago.

I updated the actions to use v3 to get rid of these warnings:

Warning 01:  
build  
Node.js 12 actions are deprecated. For more information see: https://github.blog/changelog/2022-09-22-github-actions-all-actions-will-begin-running-on-node16-instead-of-node12/. Please update the following actions to use Node.js 16: actions/checkout@v2, actions/setup-node@v1, actions/upload-artifact@v2

Warning 02:  
build
There are over 10,000 files in this artifact, consider creating an archive before upload to improve the upload performance.

Warning 03:  
deploy
Node.js 12 actions are deprecated. For more information see: https://github.blog/changelog/2022-09-22-github-actions-all-actions-will-begin-running-on-node16-instead-of-node12/. Please update the following actions to use Node.js 16: actions/download-artifact@v2

Warning 04:  
deploy
The `set-output` command is deprecated and will be disabled soon. Please upgrade to using Environment Files. For more information see: https://github.blog/changelog/2022-10-11-github-actions-deprecating-save-state-and-set-output-commands/

Below is the contents of my workflow file:

# Docs for the Azure Web Apps Deploy action: https://github.com/Azure/webapps-deploy
# More GitHub Actions for Azure: https://github.com/Azure/actions

name: Build and deploy Node.js app to Azure Web App - <my-app-name>

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Set up Node.js version
        uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: '18.x'

      - name: npm install, build, and test
        run: |
          npm install
          npm run build --if-present
          npm run test --if-present

      - name: Upload artifact for deployment job
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
        with:
          name: node-app
          path: .

  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: build
    environment:
      name: 'Production'
      url: ${{ steps.deploy-to-webapp.outputs.webapp-url }}

    steps:
      - name: Download artifact from build job
        uses: actions/download-artifact@v3
        with:
          name: node-app

      - name: 'Deploy to Azure Web App'
        id: deploy-to-webapp
        uses: azure/webapps-deploy@v2
        with:
          app-name: '<my-app-name>'
          slot-name: 'Production'
          publish-profile: ${{ secrets.AZUREAPPSERVICE_PUBLISHPROFILE_******** }}
          package: .

The only remaining warning is this one:

build  
There are over 10,000 files in this artifact, consider creating an archive before upload to improve the upload performance.

[shpraka]

@kw214 is it still happening? Are you using workflow file similar to https://github.com/Azure/actions-workflow-samples/blob/master/AppService/node.js-webapp-on-azure.yml?

[shpraka]

@oshihirii could you try using https://github.com/Azure/actions-workflow-samples/blob/master/AppService/node.js-webapp-on-azure.yml as a reference for your workflow file and see if it works?

Also see if setting the appsetting WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE="1" helps.

[tommcclean]

Would be great if this could be fixed, I have a few apps I gave up on Azure with over the years as they all build on netlify in < 1 minute. Just this evening revisited to see if improved and it isn't yet.