Private source maps with Vite: hidden maps, upload, then remove from dist

[virajrakholiya]

Sharing a pattern for readable production stack traces from a Vite app without publishing your source.

1. Build with build.sourcemap: "hidden". Vite writes the .map files but leaves out the //# sourceMappingURL comment, so browsers never ask for them.
2. After the build, upload the maps to wherever you resolve stack traces (your error tracker).
3. Delete the .map files from dist before deploying, so they are never served even if someone guesses the URL.
4. Match maps by file name. Vite's hashed file names already make that unique per build, so no release bookkeeping is needed.

Gotcha: if the upload needs a token from .env.local, hosted builds (Vercel, Netlify, CI) don't have that file. The build still passes and the upload is quietly skipped. Put the token in the host's environment variables too.

Question: do you do steps 2 and 3 in a Vite plugin (closeBundle) or as a separate script after vite build?

(Disclosure: I'm building Relia, a monitoring tool (https://tryrelia.com/?utm_source=vite-show-and-tell&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=places); its Vite plugin does steps 2 and 3, and this is the reasoning behind it.)