Magento 2 - looking for faster and better way to deploy static content

Question

I am using a multi store setup with Arabic and English and everything is working well including building modules and template building.

However, if I make a change to any less file or JS file (despite using grunt less or grunt watch) I have to run the following commands on my development environment everything single time to see them on my local machine.

$ rm -rf var/cache var/page_cache var/view_preprocessed pub/static
$ php -dmemory_limit=1G bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy -f //even if I use --theme Mythemename -f
$ grunt exec less // sometimes I leave this do this
$ grunt // I swap between these

This takes a long time to do this process everytime. It is frustrating as I like to see CSS and Less immediately on the site and not wait around.

Surely there must be a quicker way for our deployment, development to work better and to see changes faster without downtime.

Even Magento 2 official documentation says your LIVE site needs to go into maintenance and downtime mode to publish content - this is not an option for us.

Answer 1

There are various options available to allow you to run command for specific cases.

Please check the options below:

Options:

  -f, --force                                Deploy files in any mode.
  -s, --strategy[=STRATEGY]                  Deploy files using specified strategy. [default: "quick"]
  -a, --area[=AREA]                          Generate files only for the specified areas. [default: ["all"]] (multiple values allowed)
      --exclude-area[=EXCLUDE-AREA]          Do not generate files for the specified areas. [default: ["none"]] (multiple values allowed)
  -t, --theme[=THEME]                        Generate static view files for only the specified themes. [default: ["all"]] (multiple values allowed)
      --exclude-theme[=EXCLUDE-THEME]        Do not generate files for the specified themes. [default: ["none"]] (multiple values allowed)
  -l, --language[=LANGUAGE]                  Generate files only for the specified languages. [default: ["all"]] (multiple values allowed)
      --exclude-language[=EXCLUDE-LANGUAGE]  Do not generate files for the specified languages. [default: ["none"]] (multiple values allowed)
  -j, --jobs[=JOBS]                          Enable parallel processing using the specified number of jobs. [default: 0]
      --symlink-locale                       Create symlinks for the files of those locales, which are passed for deployment, but have no customizations.
      --content-version=CONTENT-VERSION      Custom version of static content can be used if running deployment on multiple nodes to ensure that static content version is identical and caching works properly.
      --refresh-content-version-only         Refreshing the version of static content only can be used to refresh static content in browser cache and CDN cache.
      --no-javascript                        Do not deploy JavaScript files.
      --no-css                               Do not deploy CSS files.
      --no-less                              Do not deploy LESS files.
      --no-images                            Do not deploy images.
      --no-fonts                             Do not deploy font files.
      --no-html                              Do not deploy HTML files.
      --no-misc                              Do not deploy files of other types (.md, .jbf, .csv, etc.).
      --no-html-minify                       Do not minify HTML files.
  -h, --help                                 Display this help message
  -q, --quiet                                Do not output any message
  -V, --version                              Display this application version
      --ansi                                 Force ANSI output
      --no-ansi                              Disable ANSI output
  -n, --no-interaction                       Do not ask any interactive question
  -v|vv|vvv, --verbose                       Increase the verbosity of messages: 1 for normal output, 2 for more verbose output and 3 for debug

You can use any option in the following way:

php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy [--option]

For example: If you want to deploy content for the front end only and for the Luma theme only, then the following command will work:

php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy --area=frontend --theme=Magento/luma

Answer 2

You can use --jobs parameter with static content deploy command as below .

sudo php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy -f -j=4

So static content deployment will be execute in 4 parallel threads.

Answer 3

For development you can try this:

1. php bin/magento config:set dev/front_end_development_workflow/type client_side_compilation
2. php bin/magento cache:flush

Reference to official DevDocs: https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.4/frontend-dev-guide/css-guide/css_quick_guide_mode.html#using-client-side-compilation-mode

Answer 4

What i can suggest is to change your deployment strategy and build ready pre-built images which just need to be deployed - either using Docker or Kubernetes.

That way you can clearly separate the building from deployment process.

The only downtime we have doing this currently on a live website is when we are applying the module changes (setup:upgrade) - which is probably less than 3-4 seconds at most.

If you want write to me at Skype: miracle_bg and i can give you further details and may be even parts of our CI/CD process (using github actions and docker).