What does consitute "build time"?

I’m of course reacting to the 300 min ceiling on the starting plans :slight_smile:

I wonder what consitute build time during an overall deploy? Surely this cannot be “delploy time”?

Our framework usually takes less than 20seconds to “build” the pages, all the rest is then handled by netlify, deploying potentially post-processing etc… As we commit our compiled assets, Netlify never has to compile any scripts and yet systematically install nodejs etc…

In any case:

  1. What does consitute build time or at least what will be included in the 300 min max.
  2. How will be able to closely monitor those?

Thanks a ton!

hi @regisphilibert - great questions, and we’ll be happy to keep talking through the details until everyone feels well informed.

Each time a website is deployed to Netlify, a dedicated build process can be set to run automatically on our buildbot infrastructure. This build process can be used to run site generators, compile JS, optimize assets, or perform other required tasks prior to deploying your project to our global infrastructure. (I emphasize “can be set” because a purely static site such as html/css will not need to be built, or generated, or compiled, so it is site dependent.)

Each minute of compute used during the build process counts as a build minute. So the time spent deploying after building does not count.

The new Netlify dashboard has a Builds section where you can track your build activity across all your team projects.

Have you had a chance to check your dashboard from september? What does it say? We’ll be happy to share tips on minimizing build times as well.

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Hi @perry and thanks for your answer.

Have you had a chance to check your dashboard from september?

Ah ah, yes, I saw that literally 10 seconds after posting that thread. It’s great!

Now, in the deploy list, there is a “Deployed in x time” sentence. Is it “deploy” time only?

I think what would be ideal is that the build time and potentially deploy time are listed in the “Deploy Summary” on individual deploy. It would helps us taking on reducing the build time when possible and closely monitor it after optimization. For now, it takes reading the log and a bit of math :slight_smile:

That’s an interesting idea, @regisphilibert - i’ll pass it on to the UX team.

Just to be really clear - no one will pay for deploy time, only build time.

What other questions do you or others have? We’ll keep responding until everyone feels clear on this :muscle:

Actually, we should be a little more precise here. If we define “deploy time” as “time spent uploading new or changed files resulting from the build”, then that time actually does count in the build minutes. We chose this pattern because it matches the standard practice for similar services.

To define the start and end very specifically:

  • We start counting build minutes when we begin loading your dependencies. In the deploy log, the first line of this process reads, Fetching cached dependencies.
  • We stop counting when we’ve finished uploading any files that were created or updated in your build. The first line to print after this process is finished says, Starting post processing.

I’m working now on adding these details to our FAQ. We’re also planning to add some related log lines directly to the deploy logs. Hope that helps!

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THANK YOU @verythorough for clarifying that and making that really clear! @regisphilibert - just making sure you see this. Please let us know if you have any further questions!

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Thanks @perry and @verythorough this is clearer indeed. Makes me really needy for this information being prominently displayed in the build summary though :smiley:

What I would want is to know how much this particular build “cost” me on my maxed out build time minutes.

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this is great and valuable feedback. We are definitely interested in getting more specific information in the dashboard. Working on it!

We’re showing the build time in the deploy summary now. Thanks for the suggestion!

Deploy summary showing build time and total deploy time

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