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Vite: The Native ESM Dev Server, HMR, Dependency Pre-bundling and Production Builds with Rolldown

In development Vite does not bundle source code: it transforms each file on request, serves it as native ESM and pre-bundles dependencies once; in production Vite 8 uses Rolldown, Oxc and Lightning CSS. Connecting the Bookstore widget to ASP.NET Core, we look at the /api proxy, when HMR reloads the page, a Razor tag helper that reads manifest.json, how VITE_ variables end up in the bundle, and settings that silently stop working when migrating from Vite 7.