AngularCli build and server --aot vs --prod

from Bundle size of “ng build --prod” smaller than “build --prod --aot

If you're using certain libraries that do not support AoT (and release UMD bundles) this might happen. The reason is that we cannot optimize components that are pure JavaScript. This is not something we can fix on our side, unfortunately.

Those libraries need to expose ES2015 modules with their decorators removed and their components/modules already AoT compiled. We are working on guidelines for libraries to support both JIT and AoT compilation.

Also, sometimes with some templates the AoT size might be larger than the JIT. The gzipped versions should be the other way around, as most of the AoT content is the same statements repeated over and over.

Although the bundle is larger, the bootstrap time should be significantly faster.

--prod- apply uglify and minify to reduce the bundle as well make angular work in production mode which reduces runtime warnings given by angular compiler as well increase performance.

--aot- generally when we serve angular project all the angular files are downloaded on browser and it will compile and execute the application on the browser but in aot entire application delivered to the browser is precompiled hence improves the performance

build- will bundle files and put it in dist folder so that we can use those for deployment on servers.

serve- will run the application on lite server.