Vite manifest not found in Laravel

1. About the error
2. Why do I see this error
3. Solution
4. In development
5. In production
6. Older projects (Laravel Mix)

#About the error

The message reads:

Illuminate\Foundation\ViteException: Vite manifest not found at: /var/www/public/build/manifest.json

The @vite directive in your Blade layout looks up that manifest.json to know which compiled CSS and JS files to load. If the file isn't there, Laravel throws.

#Why do I see this error

The manifest is generated by Vite when it builds your assets. It's missing because:

• You're in development but the Vite dev server isn't running.
• You're in production but you never ran the build step.
• The public/build directory wasn't deployed to the server.

#Solution

#In development

Start the Vite dev server and leave it running alongside your application:

npm run dev

While npm run dev is running, @vite talks to the dev server directly and no manifest file is needed.

#In production

Build the assets. This is what generates public/build/manifest.json:

npm install
npm run build

Make this part of your deploy process so it runs on every release. If you build locally and deploy, make sure the public/build directory is actually uploaded and not excluded by a .gitignore or rsync filter.

#Older projects (Laravel Mix)

If your project still uses Laravel Mix instead of Vite, the equivalent error mentions mix-manifest.json. The fix is the same idea with Mix's commands:

npm run dev      # development
npm run production   # build for production

For zero-downtime deploys where assets are built per release, see zero downtime PHP deployments.