I have a Node.js backend that serves up the React frontend (later I can do CDN probably) and for now, I plan on disallowing CORS so React must talk to my Node.js backend only. The prototype for this is on GitHub.

What I am trying to figure out is how to launch this in a docker container but stripped of all the extra files (such as all the *.ts files found in node_modules). Ideally, the Docker container should only contain the code needed to run Node.js and the JavaScript code of the React application (plus JavaScript libraries – albeit compiled from original TypeScript in many cases).

How does one make this happen, as I see a compile only puts my *.ts files into dist/*.js files but I do not see any movement on the node_modules/*.js files to be put anywhere.

Is there no way to do this to keep my Docker image small so uploads from CI/CD are very quick?

I tried the basic tutorials but they all seem to include all the extra files.