Very slow build time and hot reload time during development

[messerbill]

Current Behavior

Hey everyone,
since I updated to nx 20.x (coming form v 17.x) starting my backend apps (express.js) is very slow and it also takes a long time until code changes are noticed and reloaded during development. Especially when I run multiple microservices inside the monorepo it leads to very high memory usage - much more than before. Back in the days this was no problem at all.

Is this a known issue?

I also receive several deprecation warnings since the update, just like this one:

npm warn deprecated inflight@1.0.6: This module is not supported, and leaks memory. Do not use it. Check out lru-cache if you want a good and tested way to coalesce async requests by a key value, which is much more comprehensive and powerful.

which comes from an outdated version of glob as far as I could debug it. Could it be related to the issue? My system seems to have problems when I run multiple instances of my backend apps in my monorepo (what was no problem before) and sometimes even leads to a complete freeze.

lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:    Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS
Release:    24.04
Codename:    noble

node -v
v22.13.1

npm -v
10.9.2

"nx": "20.4.0",

This is only a problem with my backend apps. My frontend react apps (via vite) do not struggle at all.

Expected Behavior

I'd expect the monorepo (especially the backend node apps) to run with a much higher performance (especially when it comes to a hot reload after a lib was changed which is used by multiple backend apps).

GitHub Repo

No response

Steps to Reproduce

1. create a lib with some code
2. create 3-4 express.js apps in the monorepo using that lib
3. make changes inside the lib
4. have a look at the memory usage and performance while hot reloading

Nx Report

npx nx report

 NX   Report complete - copy this into the issue template

Node           : 22.13.1
OS             : linux-x64
Native Target  : x86_64-linux
npm            : 10.9.2

nx                     : 20.4.0
@nx/js                 : 20.4.0
@nx/jest               : 20.4.0
@nx/eslint             : 20.4.0
@nx/workspace          : 20.4.0
@nx/devkit             : 20.4.0
@nx/esbuild            : 20.4.0
@nx/eslint-plugin      : 20.4.0
@nx/express            : 20.4.0
@nx/module-federation  : 20.4.0
@nx/node               : 20.4.0
@nx/react              : 20.4.0
@nx/rollup             : 20.4.0
@nx/vite               : 20.4.0
@nx/web                : 20.4.0
typescript             : 5.7.3

Failure Logs

Package Manager Version

No response

Operating System

• macOS
• Linux
• Windows
• Other (Please specify)

Additional Information

With nx v17.x this was no problem at all.