Running "next build" on ec2 is slow

[Nosherwan]

I am deploying a next js application on ec2 t2.micro instance via docker.
'next build' command takes a long time & I suspect with increasing page numbers it will probably stall as there is only 1 GB ram available on a t2.micro instance.
One possibility is that I run 'next build' on my local machine and then push .next folder to the ec2 instance via git, that way I can skip the 'next build' step on the instance itself.

Is this is reasonable course of action or 'next build' should be run on the ec2 instance?

My docker file is as follows:

FROM node:10.15.3-alpine
RUN apk add --no-cache tzdata
ENV TZ Australia/Sydney
# Create app directory
WORKDIR /app

COPY package*.json /app/
# Installs everything from package.json
RUN npm install
# Will copy all files except node_modules
COPY . .
# Building app, (can this be done locally & push .next folder on instance)
RUN npm run build
# even though port is being exposed it will
# be overridden by docker-compose port
EXPOSE 3000 

CMD [ "npm", "start" ]

My relevant docker compose section is:

version: '3.2'
services:
  webapp:
    build:
      context: ./
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    image: my-web-app
    container_name: webapp
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
    volumes:
      # To sync file changes.
      - ./:/app
      # To not break node modules.
      - /app/node_modules
      # For next build.
      - /app/.next

    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      - app-network

Also as the ec2 instance deployment is production, please suggest any changes in the docker file that my not be required in prod, such as the volume creation.

[jguffey]

I'm new to docker myself, but isn't the idea of docker that you build the image once and only ship the image? If npm run build is part of the image building pipeline, then if you could just deploy the image you could skip building the image in EC2 - the EC2 instance would only run the instance.

Might require more tooling work, but I think that's one of the features of Docker, no?

[Nosherwan]

Thanks for the idea @jguffey I am not docker guru either but that could be an option. Will have to do more tooling and scripting as you have suggested.

[jguffey]

Awesome, I'd be curious as to what you find, I'm planning a similar setup as you are and will be getting to the production deployment steps soon 🤞