[Task]: Reduce the amount of static files in site-static/ for addons-server

[bqbn]

Description

Starting from early September 2024, the addons-server has begun to put tens of thousands of files in its site-static directory. Consequently, we are currently uploading over 15,000 files to Google Cloud Storage (GCS) during each deployment, 99% of which are never accessed.

The goal is to optimize the site-static directory by retaining only the essential files. This optimization would offer several advantages, such as:

• Reduction in container image size,
• Decreased deployment times,
• Conservation of network bandwidth,
• Reduced long-term storage costs,
• Enhanced security by minimizing exposure.

The task is to devise a strategy for managing the directory contents more efficiently, ensuring that we only upload what is necessary to our infrastructure.

Acceptance Criteria

Retain only the truly essential files in the site-static directory.

Checks

• [X] If I have identified that the work is specific to a repository, I have removed "repository:addons-server" or "repository:addons-frontend"

┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task

[diox]

This was caused by https://github.com/mozilla/addons-server/pull/22613 and the introduction of django-node-assets to replace our custom copying of files.

Maybe we could still use django-node-assets with a custom finder to avoid exporting so many useless files (from all our node_modules/) to site-static/ ...