Feature Request: option for publicDir to override the default public root in dev mode

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently, even though publicDir is set to a directory inside vite.config.js, in addition to serving those files statically, all files in the current directory are also still served as static files in dev mode.

For example, http://localhost:3000/package.json will always show the project’s package.json regardless of the publicDir.

Describe the solution you’d like

One of:

• Disable the “default root is always public” behavior when the publicDir is set (is this a breaking change?)
• An option in the config to disable the “root is public” behavior, if the above is not feasible.

Additional context

Some devs have tripped up and accidentally referenced /public/image.png in their code, which works in dev but breaks in production, as the project root is no longer served as static.

[dallonf]

What’s the rationale for this being a feature that the dev server currently works differently than production in this way? I was actually just coming here to report a bug when a member of my team imported some assets from the root directory instead of putting them in “public”, which would have caused it to break in production had I not caught it.

[GrygrFlzr]

Nope. That’s a typo in the commit message, they intended to close #2857, not this issue. Reopening.