Why you shouldn’t use nodemon in production in a Node.JS app?

`nodemon` is a development tool for Node.JS that automatically restarts the server whenever a file change is detected. While `nodemon` can be incredibly helpful during the development process to improve productivity and streamline the development workflow, it is generally not recommended to use `nodemon` in production environments. Here’s why:

1. Overhead: `nodemon` adds an additional layer of overhead to your Node.js application. It constantly monitors file changes, which consumes system resources and can impact the performance of your production server. In a production environment, you typically want to optimize resource usage and ensure maximum performance.

2. Stability: `nodemon` is primarily designed for development purposes and may not have the same level of stability and robustness as a production-ready server setup. It might introduce bugs, crashes, or unexpected behavior that can impact the availability and reliability of your application.

3. Security: Continuous monitoring and restarting of the server with `nodemon` can potentially introduce security risks. For example, if there is a vulnerability in your application code or a dependency, `nodemon` may automatically restart the server and expose the vulnerability to potential attackers. In a production environment, it’s crucial to maintain a secure and stable server configuration.

4. Best Practices: Production environments often require different configuration settings and deployment strategies compared to development environments. Using `nodemon` in production goes against established best practices, as it’s generally recommended to use process managers like PM2 or systemd to manage and monitor Node.JS applications in production. These tools provide more control, scalability, and monitoring capabilities specifically tailored for production deployments.

5. Scalability and Deployment: When scaling your application or deploying it to multiple servers or a cloud infrastructure, managing the server process with `nodemon` becomes impractical. Process managers like PM2 offer features such as clustering, load balancing, and log management, which are essential for managing complex production deployments.

In summary, `nodemon` is a valuable development tool but not suitable for production environments. For production deployments, it is recommended to use process managers designed explicitly for Node.JS production servers, which offer better performance, stability, security, and scalability features.