Building Angular Applications in Production Mode using the ng build --prod Command

In the ecosystem of Angular application development, choosing the correct command to build your application can be critical. Particularly when it comes to building an application for production mode, certain commands are more suited than others. One such command, and the correct answer to the quiz question, is: ng build --prod.

Angular CLI, or command line interface, provides several commands to ease development and deployment of Angular applications. Among them, ng build and ng serve are popularly used. However, it is ng build --prod that is specifically designed for building applications in production mode.

Understanding the Command ng build --prod

So, what does ng build --prod do? In simple terms, it builds your Angular application and optimizes it for production deployment.

This is a more enhanced version of the ng build command. The ng build command compiles the application into an output directory. However, ng build --prod takes this a step further. It not only compiles the application into the output directory, but also makes several optimization to make the app load and perform faster. These optimizations include minification of bundles, removal of development asserts and dead code elimination.

For instance, here is a basic example on how to use it:

ng build --prod

After running this command, Angular CLI will produce several files in the dist/ directory. These files constitute the built and optimized version of your Angular application ready to be deployed in a production environment.

Best Practices

When developing and deploying Angular applications, the command ng build --prod should be the default choice for building an application for a production environment due to its optimization features.

However, it's important to test the production build locally before deploying it to a live server. This can be achieved by using a local HTTP server. ng serve command is used to build the application and serve it locally for development purposes but it doesn't do with production optimizations.

Moreover, it's always good to turn on the Ahead-of-Time (AOT) Compilation, build optimizer and enabling production mode in your development environment before you prepare your application for production. These practices improve the performance of the application and ensure a smoother user experience.

Hence, keep in mind the power of ng build --prod when you are ready to move your application from development to production. It ensures that your application performs optimally in a live environment, providing users the best possible experience.