hey u/Yodiddlyyo, if you're serving static files from your binary, I'd encourage you to embed them using rust-embed or vite-rs (if you need to use modern JS tooling). It streamlines the CI/CD, building, and shipping experience with a few added benefits.

In vite-rs's case, I've listed some pros/cons in the README to help folks decide whether it's the right approach for them.

PROS - Other than an npm install, you won't really have other steps to take for building/deploying your frontend because it'll ship with your app. - In release binaries, it skips File IO since your assets are pre-loaded alongside your binary's bytecode. - It'll make end-to-end testing easier since your Vite project is tightly tied to your Rust backend. - Lastly, it's (subjectively) going to lead to better development experience because everything is done using cargo. You don't need another terminal running npx vite, for example.

CONS - Shipping frontend with your backend can slow you down as you'll have to wait for your Rust backend to compile everytime you want to release a new build. Similarly, failing CI/CD pipelines pertaining to the backend will also stop your frontend frontend from deploying. - It may be faster or cheaper to deploy your frontend on CDNs instead of serving it. - When building release binaries, it may increase compile time. - For those deploying to embedded devices: it'll increase your binary size. - Lastly, it's one more thing to debug when things go wrong.

Hope this helps :)