serverless-plugin-include-dependencies

This is a Serverless plugin that should make your deployed functions smaller. It does this by excluding node_modules then individually adds each module file that your handler depends on.

6.0.0 requires Node 18.18 and newer to function. Updated dependencies, fixed small bugs introduced in 5.1.0 version.

5.1.0 introduces support for detecting dependencies of files included via package.patterns

This is useful if you are dynamically importing a directory.

As of 5.0.0 this plugin uses the package.patterns property. always is no longer supported as it should be possible with just package.patterns

Note: This plugin no longer excludes the aws-sdk to stay in line with AWS best practices (bring your own SDK)

If you use this plugin, you should disable the built-in Serverless option for excluding development dependencies, which is slower anyway:

package:
  excludeDevDependencies: false

Also consider using serverless-plugin-common-excludes for even greater package size reduction, and serverless-plugin-package-size to add guards against your deployed functions so that they do not exceed a size limit that you set.

Installation

First install the plugin via npm.

npm install serverless-plugin-include-dependencies --save-dev

Then include the plugin within your serverless.yml config.

plugins:
  - serverless-plugin-include-dependencies

Usage Example

serverless.yml

service: sample

package:
  patterns:
    - '!node_modules/**' # no need to add this, this plugin does it for you

plugins:
  - serverless-plugin-common-excludes # this should go before serverless-plugin-include-dependencies
  - serverless-plugin-include-dependencies

functions:
  foo:
    handler: src/handler/foo.handler
  bar:
    handler: src/handler/bar.handler

For even smaller function packages, you can also set:

package:
  individually: true

But be warned: Smaller individual functions can still mean a larger overall deployment. (10 functions that are 3 MB each is more net data transfer and storage than 1 function that is 6 MB)

Dependency caching (Experimental)

When building a shared bundle for several functions, execution time can be reduced by enabling dependency caching. Caching is disabled by default and can be enabled using the enableCaching option:

custom:
  includeDependencies:
    enableCaching: true

New In 2.0 - Exclusion Support

Rather than including module folders (e.g. node_modules/foo/**, it now includes a list of actual files (e.g. node_modules/foo/package.json, node_modules/foo/index.js) and uses the serverless package patterns to filter these files. Patterns must start with !node_modules to be considered by this plugin.

The following examples would filter files of your module dependencies:

• !node_modules/**/README.*
• !node_modules/**/test/**

These would not:

• !README
• !**/*.txt

Even though normal matching libraries would match these rules, this library ignores them so that there's no chance of local excludes conflicting with node_modules excludes.

Unless you know exactly where dependencies will be installed (e.g. several things could depend on aws-sdk) you probably want a rule more like !node_modules/**/foo/** (which will exclude all instances of foo) and not node_modules/foo/** (which would only exclude a top-level foo)