How can I enable Vue DevTools when serving Vue.js assets via Django?

When you build for production (or when Django serves your built assets), you’re getting Vue’s production build—which disables the devtools by design—even if you force the flag via define. Here are two main approaches to fix the issue:

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1. Use the Development Server for Debugging

The simplest solution is to run your frontend using Vite’s development server (i.e. using npm run dev). This way, Vue isn’t built with production optimizations and you’ll get full devtools support. To work with your backend during development, you can configure a proxy in your Vite config so API calls go to Django’s endpoints without running into CORS or Same-Origin issues:

JAVASCRIPTCopied
// vite.config.js
import { fileURLToPath, URL } from 'node:url'
import { defineConfig } from 'vite'
import vue from '@vitejs/plugin-vue'
import vueDevTools from 'vite-plugin-vue-devtools'

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [
    vue(),
    vueDevTools(),
  ],
  resolve: {
    alias: {
      '@': fileURLToPath(new URL('./src', import.meta.url))
    },
  },
  server: {
    proxy: {
      // Example: Proxy all API requests starting with /api to your Django backend
      '/api': 'http://localhost:8000'
    }
  }
})

Run this using npm run dev, and you can debug with Vue DevTools in Firefox without issue.

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2. Serve the Development Build of Vue from Django

If you need to test your integrated setup with Django serving your assets, you likely have your production build in Django’s static folder. The production build of Vue automatically disables devtools even when you force it via configuration. To work around this, you have two options:

• Use a Conditional Build Configuration:
  Create a separate build configuration for debugging that does not set process.env.NODE_ENV to 'production' and that uses the development build of Vue (e.g. vue.global.js or similar) rather than vue.global.prod.js. This means using a different output directory (or even a different HTML template) for debugging versus your production deployment.

• Manually Load the Development Build:
  Modify your HTML (or Django template) during debugging so that it loads the full (unminified) Vue development build instead of the production one. This might include changing the script source if you’re self-hosting Vue. For example:

  HTMLCopied
  <!-- Use this during debugging -->
  <script src="/path/to/vue.global.js"></script>

  Instead of the production file:

  HTMLCopied
  <!-- Production build -->
  <script src="/path/to/vue.global.prod.js"></script>

  This way, even though your app is served by Django, it will run with development mode enabled and allow devtools inspection.

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Summary

The error comes from Vue’s production optimizations that disable devtools. For debugging, it’s easiest to use Vite’s dev server (with a proxy to Django) so that the development build is used. If you must use Django to serve your assets for integration testing, ensure that the development build of Vue is loaded rather than the production build.