"meteor" vs "meteor bundle" for production

Question

For production why should I "bundle" the meteor application and not just copy the sources on the server use the "meteor" command?

Basically what is the difference between:

• "meteor bundle app.tar.gz", then installing the right version of fibers and nodejs and extracting the archive and starting with "node main.js" the app,

• and copying the project sources on the server and just writing "meteor" to start the app?

Answer 1

This won't be an exhaustive list, but here are some things that the meteor command does:

1. creates a local database
2. watches on every dependent file in your app or in your packages
3. sends every file separately and unminified to the client (this is super inefficient unless you are developing locally)

In contrast, bundling an app:

1. does not create a local database
2. does not spend CPU watching your files for changes
3. creates two minified files (js and css) which is perfect for putting on a CDN or hosting from a reverse proxy. These are also efficient for clients to download and are highly cacheable.

In general, deploying shouldn't be a huge pain if you use a good set of scripts.