Dark Art of decreasing create-react-app initialization time

create-react-app is deprecated

The article was written a long while ago, since then create-react-app has evolved to a point that it has been deprecated in favor of more modern and streamlined alternatives. Take everything here, with a bit of salt and pepper.

With recently jumping to React ecosystem, I was greatly surprised by high loading time on create-react-app on subsequent runs, sometime even crossing 3 minute mark.

From what I expected, it was obvious for package manager to cache the modules on subsequent runs and just verify the integrity of the cache. However, that was not the case with npm or yarn. I tried --offline flag, but all in vain.

Seems like create-react-app simply installs react, react-dom, react-scripts and cra-template etc, along with some template react code to start with.

Global install also doesn't seem to help either. So, it seems like create-react-app tool forces fresh installation ignoring the cache.

Tools Required

1. Package Managers like yarn or pnpm. npm doesn't allow using explicit caching.
2. Fast and stable Internet Speed.
3. UNIX based System. [It can easily transported to Windows too.]

Initial Approach

Generating the Cache [Only once]

First we will forcibly create cache by using our package manager, any local or global install will work.

yarn global add create-react-app
cd ~
yarn create react-app react_source_app

First, we are installing react-app for users who haven't done it yet. Then we are creating a new seed react project in home directory. Don't edit the created app, we will use them as partial buffer for subsequent runs.

On Subsequent Runs

Instead of running the above code we will run for each project initialization, we can simply run the commands given below. These are aimed to take less bandwidth as well as time during the install.

mkdir <name-of-project>
cd <name-of-project>
yarn init
yarn add --offline react react-dom react-scripts cra-template web-vitals
cp -r ~/react_source_app/public ./
cp -r ~/react_source_app/src ./
cp ~/react_source_app/README.md ./
cp ~/react_source_app/package.json ./

This will basically force yarn to use offline cache for dependencies for our React app. Using that will drastically reduce network bandwidth as well as initialization time.

Updating Packages

User can update react file monthly to ensure having best of both world.

cd ~/react_source_app
yarn install

You can even delete react_source_app directory completely and then re-run step 1.

Automating Stuffs

Now, you won't want every time, to write all those commands just to initialize your react script. So, I have written a simple bash script to get started without needing to stress about any previous commands.

#! /usr/bin/bash
SEED_FOLDER_LOC_="/home/$USER/react_source_app"

if [ ! -d "$SEED_FOLDER_LOC_" ];
then
	echo "SEED FOLDER isn't initialized yet! Initializing....."
	cd "/home/$USER" || return 1
	yarn create react-app react_source_app
	cd - || return 1
	echo "SEED Folder initialized" 
fi

read -r -p "Enter Project Name: " PROJECT_NAME_
mkdir "$PROJECT_NAME_"
cd "$PROJECT_NAME_" || return 2
yarn init
yarn add --offline react react-dom react-scripts cra-template web-vitals
cp -r "$SEED_FOLDER_LOC_/public" ./
cp -r "$SEED_FOLDER_LOC_/src" ./
cp "$SEED_FOLDER_LOC_/README.md" ./
cp "$SEED_FOLDER_LOC_/package.json" ./

Just save the script in /home/$USER/.local/bin/ directory as react-init and give executable permission to that script.

sudo nano "/home/$USER/.local/bin/react-init" # Paste the above script in that file
sudo chmod +x "/home/$USER/.local/bin/react-init" # Giving Executable permission to the file

Then you can simply use this utility by calling react-init in your terminal, no need to initialize the seed folder.

Benchmarks

Process	Time took	Data Utilized
yarn global add create-react-app	5.73s	~2MB
yarn create react-app react_source_app (First Run)	642.82s	~170MB
yarn create react-app react_source_app (Subsequent Run)	727.67s	~150MB
yarn init	3.53s	NA
yarn add --offline react react-dom react-scripts cra-template web-vitals	22.21s	NA

Data Utilized are tentative and are not actual indication of what create-react-app uses in long run. I have used my PC for benchmarking purpose and might not be representative of other systems. Timing are subject to Internet Bandwidth.(I had poor bandwidth)

Result

With this small set of hack, we can not only speed up our development, but also save on some expensive data. Note that, I will recommend going with yarn create react-app <app-name> for critical apps and apps of great use. But for learning purpose, these steps can be your go to destination. This hack is particularly more helpful in areas with limited bandwidth, or if you are just frustrated with high loading time.

Alternate

With create-react-app being super slow and irritating, developers prefer to use vite to initialize react app, which comes out to much faster (even more than the current workaround). To use vite simply use

yarn

yarn create vite
cd <Project-name>
yarn
yarn dev

npm

npm create vite
cd <Project-Name>
npm install
npm run dev

By design vite is more empathic towards storage resource with only requiring ~70MB, while create-react-app requiring around ~350MB and current workaround requiring ~250MB.

Alternatively, you can use React in plain old html. [Not recommended in production]

Alternate Title

Decrease create-react-app running time
Initialize react-app without internet