{
  "id": 7519408,
  "title": "Vite Builds My Project in 2.7s. The Next Ionify Build Takes 50ms. Here's Why.",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/15/vite-builds-my-project-in-2-7s-the-next-ionify-build-takes-50ms-heres",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-15T09:33:17.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/khaledmsalem/vite-builds-my-project-in-27s-the-next-ionify-build-takes-50ms-heres-why-kic"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Vite and Ionify are two tools used for building frontend projects. Vite is known for its fast development experience and hot module replacement (HMR). The author conducted a benchmark to compare the performance of Vite and Ionify when repeatedly running production builds on a large React project with 15,000 components and 25,000 dependencies.\n\nThe initial build took 2.7 seconds with Vite and 6 seconds with Ionify. However, when no changes were made to the project, Vite's subsequent build time remained around 2.7 seconds, while Ionify's build time dropped dramatically to just 50 milliseconds. This significant change in build time after the first build is the focus of the benchmark results.\n\nThe reason behind this difference lies in how Ionify handles first builds compared to subsequent builds. Ionify doesn't treat every build as a completely new execution. Instead, it establishes a verified knowledge base of the project after the first build. For no-change builds, Ionify should only verify identities and reuse published results, rather than scanning, resolving, transforming, and bundling the entire project again.\n\nBuilding upon this concept, Ionify introduces the idea of \"Build Authority,\" where each category of verified work should have a single authoritative owner. For example, dependency resolution should be handled by a single authority, such as a dependency resolution tool, and the resulting verified artifact should be published and consumed by developers, builds, and CI systems. This approach eliminates repeated reasoning and ensures that downstream consumers do not independently recreate knowledge.\n\nThe author argues that the current issue is not about benchmarking Vite against Ionify, but rather about the amount of frontend build work that persists because tools keep forgetting what they already know. By combining concepts like incremental computation in compilers, dependency graphs in build systems, and content-addressable storage in content-addressable storage, the goal is to create a system where verified knowledge persists until it is invalidated. This approach, known as Build Authority, results in fast first builds and near-instant subsequent builds, minimizing unnecessary computation. You can learn more about the Build Authority model on the Ionify website: https://ionify.cloud/build-authority.",
  "summary": "Vite is fast. I'm not trying to argue otherwise. Its development experience and HMR are a big part of why it became the default choice for a huge part of the frontend ecosystem. But I wanted to test something else: What happens when we repeatedly run production builds on a large project? I benchmarked Vite against Ionify using a real React project with: 15,000 React components 25,000 dependencies…",
  "key_points": [
    "Vite takes 2.7 seconds for first build of large React project",
    "Ionify's subsequent build drops to 50 milliseconds after first build",
    "Ionify's Build Authority concept eliminates redundant computation"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}