Building Angular apps

You can build your Angular CLI application or library with the ng build command. This will compile your TypeScript code to JavaScript, as well as optimize, bundle, and minify the output as appropriate.

ng build only executes the builder for the build target in the default project as specified in angular.json. Angular CLI includes four builders typically used as build targets:

Applications generated by ng new use @angular/build:application by default. Libraries generated by ng generate library use @angular/build:ng-packagr by default.

You can determine which builder is being used for a particular project by looking up the build target for that project.

{
  "projects": {
    "my-app": {
      "architect": {
        // `ng build` invokes the Architect target named `build`.
        "build": {
          "builder": "@angular/build:application",
          …
        },
        "serve": { … }
        "test": { … }
        …
      }
    }
  }
}

This page discusses usage and options of @angular/build:application.

Output directory

The result of this build process is output to a directory (dist/${PROJECT_NAME} by default).

Configuring size budgets

As applications grow in functionality, they also grow in size. The CLI lets you set size thresholds in your configuration to ensure that parts of your application stay within size boundaries that you define.

Define your size boundaries in the CLI configuration file, angular.json, in a budgets section for each configured environment.

{
  …
  "configurations": {
    "production": {
      …
      "budgets": [
        {
          "type": "initial",
          "maximumWarning": "250kb",
          "maximumError": "500kb"
        },
      ]
    }
  }
}

You can specify size budgets for the entire app, and for particular parts. Each budget entry configures a budget of a given type. For example, the initial budget measures the JavaScript and CSS used to bootstrap the application, which corresponds to the Initial Total value shown in the build output summary. Specify size values in the following formats:

When you configure a budget, the builder warns or reports an error when a given part of the application reaches or exceeds a boundary size that you set.

Each budget entry is a JSON object with the following properties:

To configure a budget for a lazy-loaded bundle, use type: "bundle" and set name to that bundle's name.

{
  "budgets": [
    {
      "type": "bundle",
      "name": "admin",
      "maximumWarning": "250kb",
      "maximumError": "300kb"
    }
  ]
}

The name field matches the bundle name, not the emitted filename, so it does not use wildcard or regular expression patterns such as admin.*.js.

The following example shows a budget that uses a baseline:

{
  "type": "bundle",
  "name": "main",
  "baseline": "200kb",
  "maximumWarning": "10%",
  "maximumError": "20%"
}

In this example, the builder warns when the bundle grows beyond 220kb and errors when it grows beyond 240kb.

Configuring CommonJS dependencies

Always prefer native ECMAScript modules (ESM) throughout your application and its dependencies. ESM is a fully specified web standard and JavaScript language feature with strong static analysis support. This makes bundle optimizations more powerful than other module formats.

Angular CLI also supports importing CommonJS dependencies into your project and will bundle these dependencies automatically. However, CommonJS modules can prevent bundlers and minifiers from optimizing those modules effectively, which results in larger bundle sizes. For more information, see How CommonJS is making your bundles larger.

Angular CLI outputs warnings if it detects that your browser application depends on CommonJS modules. When you encounter a CommonJS dependency, consider asking the maintainer to support ECMAScript modules, contributing that support yourself, or using an alternative dependency which meets your needs. If the best option is to use a CommonJS dependency, you can disable these warnings by adding the CommonJS module name to allowedCommonJsDependencies option in the build options located in angular.json.

"build": {
  "builder": "@angular/build:application",
  "options": {
     "allowedCommonJsDependencies": [
        "lodash"
     ]
     …
   }
   …
},

Configuring browser compatibility

The Angular CLI uses Browserslist to ensure compatibility with different browser versions. Depending on supported browsers, Angular will automatically transform certain JavaScript and CSS features to ensure the built application does not use a feature which has not been implemented by a supported browser. However, the Angular CLI will not automatically add polyfills to supplement missing Web APIs. Use the polyfills option in angular.json to add polyfills.

By default, the Angular CLI uses a browserslist configuration which matches browsers supported by Angular for the current major version.

To override the internal configuration, run ng generate config browserslist, which generates a .browserslistrc configuration file in the project directory matching Angular's supported browsers.

See the browserslist repository for more examples of how to target specific browsers and versions. Avoid expanding this list to more browsers. Even if your application code more broadly compatible, Angular itself might not be. You should only ever reduce the set of browsers or versions in this list.

HELPFUL: Use browsersl.ist to display compatible browsers for a browserslist query.

Configuring Tailwind

Angular supports Tailwind CSS, a utility-first CSS framework.

To integrate Tailwind CSS with Angular CLI, see Using Tailwind CSS with Angular

Critical CSS inlining

Angular can inline the critical CSS definitions of your application to improve First Contentful Paint (FCP). This option is enabled default. You can disable this inlining in the styles customization options.

This optimization extracts the CSS needed to render the initial viewport and inlines it directly into the generated HTML, allowing the browser to display content faster without waiting for the full stylesheets to load. The remaining CSS then loads asynchronously in the background. Angular CLI uses Beasties to analyze your application’s HTML and styles.