The issue likely stems from a case sensitivity mismatch between your local development environment and Vercel’s build environment. Here’s a more detailed explanation of why this happens:

Case Sensitivity in Filesystems

  1. Local Development Environment

    • macOS and Windows: These operating systems typically use case-insensitive filesystems by default. This means that they treat NavBar.jsx and navbar.jsx as the same file.

  2. Vercel Build Environment

    • Unix-based Systems: Vercel uses a Unix-based system for its build environment, which is case-sensitive. This means that NavBar.jsx and navbar.jsx are treated as different files.

Why Renaming Works

When you renamed NavBar.jsx to Navbar.jsx and updated the imports accordingly, you ensured that the filename exactly matched the import statements, considering case sensitivity. Here’s what likely happened:

  • Original State: On your local machine, the filesystem did not distinguish between NavBar.jsx and navbar.jsx, so the import worked regardless of the case.
  • Vercel Build State: Vercel’s filesystem does distinguish between NavBar.jsx and navbar.jsx. If your import was import { NavBar } from './components' but the file was actually named navbar.jsx, Vercel would not find the file, causing the build to fail.

Ensuring Consistency

To avoid such issues in the future, it’s important to follow these practices:

  1. Consistent Naming Conventions: Decide on a consistent naming convention for your files (e.g., camelCase, PascalCase) and stick to it across your entire project.
  2. Double-Check Imports: Always double-check your import statements to ensure they match the exact case of the filenames.
  3. Case-Sensitive Tools: Use tools and IDE features that highlight case sensitivity issues. Some linters and build tools can be configured to check for case sensitivity mismatches.

Summary

The error occurred because of a mismatch in case sensitivity between your local development environment and Vercel’s build environment. Renaming the file to match the case exactly as used in the import statements resolved the issue. This highlights the importance of maintaining consistent naming conventions and being mindful of case sensitivity when developing and deploying applications.