Building Static Assets¶

MageObsidian uses Vite to process and bundle frontend assets (CSS, JavaScript, Vue components). This page covers building those assets to disk — for local inspection without HMR, for CI, and for production deployment.

Build a Theme to Disk (no HMR)¶

To build a single theme once to disk — the same artifacts a browser would get, but written to web/generated instead of served by the dev server — use the dev command with --no-watch:

bin/magento mage-obsidian:frontend:dev --start --no-watch --theme=Vendor/theme

This is the inverse of --start (HMR): no daemon, no watching — it runs one build and exits. Useful to inspect the real output or to reproduce a CI build locally.

Leaving the dev loop with bin/magento mage-obsidian:frontend:dev --down runs this same build for you (HMR off + rebuild to disk). Reach for --no-watch directly when you only want a one-off build without touching HMR.

The underlying engine bin¶

frontend:dev wraps the build engine's own bin, which you can also run directly from the vite/ harness (this is what CI uses):

# from the component's vite/ directory
mage-obsidian:build-themes                  # build every compatible theme
mage-obsidian:build-themes --theme Vendor/theme   # build one

frontend:dev is the Magento-side entry point (it derives the Vite .env from your config first); build-themes is the lower-level engine command. Either produces the same output.

Run the CMS export first

bin/magento mage-obsidian:cms:export

Tailwind scans files, and CMS content lives in a database. The export writes it out so the build covers the classes written in pages and blocks; without it, those classes fall to the runtime delta instead. See CMS Content.

Production Deployment¶

Production builds run inside Magento's static-content deploy. See Deploy to production.

Benefits¶

Optimized output — minified, tree-shaken, hashed assets ready for production.
Native integration — production builds happen inside setup:static-content:deploy; no extra step in your deploy pipeline.
Coexistence — legacy themes keep using Magento's native static deploy; only modern themes use Vite.

See Development Workflow for the HMR dev server and the full command set, and HMR for live reloading during development.