Comments are deleted although minify is set to false

[joseangel-mm]

Describe the bug

In a very simple Vite + React app, I am trying to keep comments in the code. To do so I've set minify to false, but in the final built index.js the comments are deleted.

Reproduction

no link

Steps to reproduce

vite-project-comments.zip

You can reproduce the issue in this PoC, to do is, just run the following command npm i && npm run build and check that the index created inside the dist folder doesn't have the comments set in the App.js file.

System Info

System:
    OS: macOS 15.1
    CPU: (10) arm64 Apple M1 Pro
    Memory: 333.97 MB / 32.00 GB
    Shell: 5.9 - /bin/zsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 18.12.1 - /usr/local/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.19 - /opt/homebrew/bin/yarn
    npm: 8.1.2 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v16.13.1/bin/npm
  Browsers:
    Chrome: 130.0.6723.93
    Edge: 130.0.2849.68
    Safari: 18.1
    Safari Technology Preview: 18.0

Used Package Manager

npm

Logs

> simple-react-app@0.0.0 build
> vite build

vite v5.4.10 building for production...
✓ 30 modules transformed.
dist/index.html                  0.39 kB │ gzip:  0.27 kB
dist/assets/index-CP4adKi0.js  215.84 kB │ gzip: 54.45 kB
✓ built in 392ms

Validations

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

[sapphi-red]

This is an expected behavior by esbuild (evanw/esbuild#3943 (comment)).

If you disable esbuild by esbuild: false, the comments will be preserved (repro).
But that of course means you cannot use any features powered by esbuild.

[joseangel-mm]

This is an expected behavior by esbuild (evanw/esbuild#3943 (comment)).

If you disable esbuild by esbuild: false, the comments will be preserved (repro). But that of course means you cannot use any features powered by esbuild.

Hi @sapphi-red, thanks for your response.

I've tested it with esbuild disabled but the result was the same, the comments were removed. You can see here.

[sapphi-red]

That's because plugin-react depends on esbuild and turns it on.

[joseangel-mm]

That's because plugin-react depends on esbuild and turns it on.

Understood, thanks for the clarification.