Vite 8.1 release and bundled dev recovery
Vite 8.1.0 shipped this week, alongside updates to create-vite 9.1.0 and plugin-legacy 8.1.0. The biggest change is in bundled dev: build errors are now cached and replayed to newly connected clients, and the server better decides when to defer vs force a full reload, making failed incremental builds much easier to recover from.
Rolldown alignment across dev, scan, and build
A series of updates tightened Vite’s integration with Rolldown 1.1.2. The dependency scanner now resolves build inputs from the Vite root instead of process.cwd(), bundled dev was updated to store newly emitted assets during HMR/lazy compile, and plugins that emit empty output now preserve explicit sourcemap metadata. These changes reduce mismatches between scan and build behavior and fix a few edge cases that could break HMR or tooling.
Monorepo and HTML handling fixes
Vite now resolves pnpm workspace metadata from the repo root, which should improve behavior in monorepos and nested packages where the working directory differs from the workspace root. HTML middleware also got a robustness fix: malformed %-encoded URLs no longer throw during decodeURIComponent(), and instead fall through cleanly.
Developer experience and template polish
Dependency optimizer messaging is clearer, with more specific wording and a dedicated optimizeDeps.include suggestion. The create-vite React prompt was also simplified to make linter choice clearer, and templates now target vite@^8.1.0 with updated config defaults, including better moduleResolution handling and optional Oxlint/ESLint support.
Other misc changes
- CI and automation fixes, including a Renovate rule correction for npm release age
- Docs and release-artifact updates for Vite 8.1 and Rolldown APIs
- Package/version bumps, lockfile refreshes, and minor workflow cleanup