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The evidence build command creates optimized production builds of your Evidence project.

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Syntax

evidence build [options]

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Description

This command builds your Evidence project for production deployment by:
  • Compiling all pages and components
  • Optimizing assets and code
  • Generating static HTML files
  • Creating hashed data files for caching
  • Copying outputs to the ./build directory
  • Automatically increases Node.js memory limit to 4096MB
The build process uses Vite to create a static adapter build of your SvelteKit application.

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Options

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--debug
boolean
default:"false"
Enables verbose console logs during the build process. Useful for troubleshooting build issues.

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Build Process

  1. Populates the .evidence/template directory with your project files
  2. Syncs all watched directories (pages, components, sources, etc.)
  3. Runs Vite build in the template directory
  4. Generates content hashes for data files
  5. Updates the manifest with hashed file paths
  6. Copies the final build to ./build (or EVIDENCE_BUILD_DIR)

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Usage Examples

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Standard production build

evidence build
Output: 
Build complete --> ./build

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Build with debug logging

evidence build --debug

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Build to a custom directory

EVIDENCE_BUILD_DIR=./dist evidence build

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Build Outputs

The build creates the following structure in ./build: 
build/
├── _app/              # Application code and assets
├── [pages]/           # Static HTML pages
└── static/
    └── data/          # Hashed parquet data files
        └── manifest.json

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Data File Hashing

During the build, parquet data files are automatically hashed using MD5 to enable cache busting: 
static/data/sqlite/transactions/transactions.parquet
→ static/data/sqlite/transactions/a1b2c3d4/transactions.parquet
The manifest.json file is updated with the hashed paths.

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Environment Variables

  • EVIDENCE_BUILD_DIR - Output directory for build files (default: ./build)
  • EVIDENCE_DATA_DIR - Directory for data files (default: ./static/data)
  • EVIDENCE_DATA_URL_PREFIX - URL prefix for data files (default: static/data)
  • EVIDENCE_IS_BUILDING - Set to true during build
See Environment Variables for a complete list.

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Exit Codes

  • 0 - Build completed successfully
  • Non-zero - Build failed
On failure: 
Build failed
Build process exited with code 1

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Strict Mode Build

For builds that fail on any error (useful in CI/CD): 
evidence build:strict
This enables strict mode which causes the build to fail on warnings and errors that would normally be ignored.

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