including node_modules causes long publish, deploy times and Azure issues with Angular template + server side rendering

[craigsmitham]

I'm using the 2.0.0 of the project templates to create a new Angular app and have configured it to use server side rendering as described here.

The package/publish takes a very long time to copy the node_modules directory to the publish directory, and the upload/deployment process takes even longer. I'm not sure it even works with Azure App Services. I zipped the outputs and used Kudu zip deploy. It uploaded OK, but the Kudu deployment process is stuck at 50% after 10 minutes.

I was curious about the rationale for including the entire node_modules directory instead of bundling with Webpack. I saw @SteveSandersonMS 's comment on issue #429, but that looks out of date. Any advice on what to do about these issues, or will server-side bundling be supported?

[SteveSandersonMS]

@craigsmitham We're awaiting a fix for angular/angular-cli#8616. I don't know of any ETA for that but you could contact the Angular CLI folks and ask for it to be prioritised.