Deployment is *very* slow (nodeJS with publish profile)

I’m using a workflow file adapted from “build and deploy a Node.js Web app to Azure using publish profile”.

(side remark) : I had issues with symbolic links too (see https://github.com/Azure/webapps-deploy/issues/54#issuecomment-694259266)

Upon analysis, it seems that the whole copy of the node_modules folders to the webroot of the webapp takes ages (10-12 minutes for the Azure Webapp deploy step !) It’s very inefficient to process and send many little files over network.

=> Shouldn’t the final npm install (and npm run build – I’m using typescript) commands be executed on the target machine instead of a github action container ?

IMHO, the workflow should be like this for the “nodeJS with publish profile” scenario :

• the github action should only send source files to the targeted runtime machine
• npm install, npm run build and npm start should be done on the targeted runtime machine
• It’s up to the developer to ensure that is app is building correctly before calling azure/webapps-deploy

Related questions :

• Also how this Github action is related to Kudu ?
• Does it use Kudu behind the scenes ? How ? (bare copy ? zip deploy ?)
• If yes, are Kudu capabilities useable ? I.E. .deployment file, deployment hooks, etc.
  references : https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu/wiki/Customizing-deployments and https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu/wiki/Deployment-hooks

[danmana]

The workflow described above runs in ~10 minutes, out of which the deploy part is the longest.

On my second attempt, I configured the workflow to deploy and run from ZIP, which is much faster - total time ~3 minutes (~1:45s build, ~30s deploy)

Step 1, in Azure configure the app to run from package, and disable the Oryx build (Github actions builds everything anyway)

WEBSITE_RUN_FROM_PACKAGE=1
SCM_DO_BUILD_DURING_DEPLOYMENT=false

Step 2, use this Github workflow that creates a zip after build (including node_modules)

# Docs for the Azure Web Apps Deploy action: https://github.com/Azure/webapps-deploy
# More GitHub Actions for Azure: https://github.com/Azure/actions

name: Build and deploy Node.js app to Azure Web App

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Set up Node.js version
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: '16'
          cache: 'npm'

      - name: npm install, build, and test
        run: |
          npm install
          npm run build --if-present
          npm run test:ci --if-present

      # Zip artifacts to speed things up
      - name: Zip artifact for deployment
        run: zip release.zip ./* -qr

      - name: Upload artifact for deployment job
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2
        with:
          name: node-app
          path: release.zip

  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: build
    environment:
      name: 'Production'
      url: ${{ steps.deploy-to-webapp.outputs.webapp-url }}

    steps:
      - name: Download artifact from build job
        uses: actions/download-artifact@v2
        with:
          name: node-app

      - name: 'Deploy to Azure Web App'
        id: deploy-to-webapp
        uses: azure/webapps-deploy@v2
        with:
          app-name: 'my-app'
          slot-name: 'Production'
          publish-profile: ${{ secrets.AZUREAPPSERVICE_PUBLISHPROFILE_38C3A64C5A4A49F792EA62F5DCBC13ED }}
          package: release.zip

An added benefit to this method is that you can download the Action artifacts later if you need to reproduce the environment exactly for debugging, as the Github job artifact named node-app here is exactly what is running on the server. There is no chance that the server would download a newer npm version or anything like that.

Plus it might reduce cold starts

[kaverma]

@sfabriece you can provide directly zip as a input to action or folder location which will be zipped in action

- name: 'Run Azure webapp deploy action using publish profile credentials'
      uses: azure/webapps-deploy@v2
      with:
        app-name: <app-name>
        publish-profile: ${{ secrets.azureWebAppPublishProfile }}
        package: <provide path of your folder or zip file>

Closing the issue as the question has been addressed and for performance we already have npm install in the sample workflow which optimises the time