Why does ionic serve in an Ionic 3 project cause a “JavaScript heap out of memory” error?

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Adding to that, sometimes leftover junk in your node_modules or package-lock.json can cause memory issues, too. From my experience troubleshooting these builds, here’s a reliable cleanup routine:

  1. Delete your node_modules folder and package-lock.json.
  2. Run npm install fresh to get a clean slate.
  3. Try ionic serve again with the Node heap size increased as before.

Also, make sure your local @ionic/app-scripts version is up to date—some older versions had notorious memory leaks that triggered this exact “ineffective mark-compacts near heap limit allocation failed - JavaScript heap out of memory” error. These steps usually resolve it once and for all.