Add option to ignore public folder

[alejandrovrojas]

Clear and concise description of the problem

Handling of the public directory is too opinionated for SSR builds, needlessly copying assets to dist despite those files being available to the server at root level.

Using a common pattern

├── public/
│   ├── favicon.svg
│   └── other_file.css
├── src/
├── server.js
└── index.html

Then linking the assets in the index.html

<link rel="icon" href="/public/favicon.svg" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/public/other_file.css" />

vite build will result in

a) favicon.svg and other_file.css being copied to the root level of the dist folder (default behavour)
b) favicon.svg being copied to the dist/assets folder with a hashed filename.
c) other_file.css link entry being removed from the index file.

Suggested solution

Allow option to disable copying files from the public directory, while also ignoring /public/* entries in index.html

Alternative

There is none as of now. Renaming the public directory or changing the publicDir config to a non-existent directory solves a), but not b) and c). Currently there's no way to keep the index.html links intact and avoid copying other linked files.

[yyx990803]

Because that is not how you should structure a Vite SSR project. In production, you should be serving files in the dist directory, not your project root. Everything outside dist is considered source file.

[github-actions]

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