Describe the bug

Problem

If the project contains a huge directory or symlinks to a huge directory, a "hello world" project can take ~45 seconds or even minutes to launch vite dev.

Vite supports ignoring directories through the server.watch.ignore option. The Vanilla Extract compiler doesn't pass it through. The parent process starts quickly but chokes as it waits for the child compiler to initialize.

Example

I ran into this because I use Nix and direnv, although the bug isn't specific to either tool. It creates a .direnv/ directory which includes a symlink to nixpkgs. It's a big honkin' repo with ~50k files.

I can ignore that directory just fine (instant startup) until I add @vanilla-extract/vite-plugin. Then everything slows to a crawl.

import { defineConfig } from 'vite';
import { vanillaExtractPlugin } from '@vanilla-extract/vite-plugin';

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [vanillaExtractPlugin()],
  server: {
    watch: {
      ignored: ['**/.direnv/**'], // Not respected by vanilla extract.
    },
  },
});

This happens for any large directory or symlink not covered by the default ignore patterns.

Hacky Workaround

No reasonable workarounds, but I am able to post-install patch node modules here passing viteConfig.server.watch.ignored, here, and here. That restores consistent 500ms startup time.

Reproduction

https://github.com/PsychoLlama/vanilla-extract-ignored-patterns-issue-repro

System Info

System:
    OS: Linux 6.12 cpe:/o:nixos:nixos:25.05 25.05 (Warbler)
    CPU: (12) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10750H CPU @ 2.60GHz
    Memory: 24.43 GB / 38.84 GB
    Container: Yes
    Shell: 0.106.1 - /nix/store/7pn92hjbp0c3jn4p0jvbjisddvx9y6fp-nushell-0.106.1/bin/nu
  Binaries:
    bun: 1.2.23 - /tmp/bun-node-cf1367137/bun
  npmPackages:
    @vanilla-extract/vite-plugin: ^5.1.1 => 5.1.1 
    vite: ^7.1.9 => 7.1.9

Used Package Manager

bun

Logs

VITE v7.1.9  ready in 52117 ms

  ➜  Local:   http://localhost:5173/
  ➜  Network: use --host to expose
  ➜  press h + enter to show help

Validations

• Check that there isn't already an issue that reports the same bug to avoid creating a duplicate.
• The provided reproduction is a minimal reproducible example of the bug.