[Performance] Audit static asset volume and exclude rarely-used assets from MapStaticAssets manifest (serve via UseStaticFiles)

[VancouverBen]

Summary

Audit the static asset set for the Store app and reduce runtime overhead by:

• bundling where appropriate, and/or
• excluding large/rarely-hit directories from the MapStaticAssets manifest using StaticWebAssetEndpointExclusionPattern, then serving those excluded assets via UseStaticFiles.

Why

Microsoft Learn notes that MapStaticAssets loads build-time metadata eagerly to enable compression/caching/fingerprinting, which increases memory usage. For ~1,000+ assets or large infrequently accessed collections, bundling or combining MapStaticAssets (critical assets) + UseStaticFiles (excluded assets) can be a better tradeoff.

Guidance (docs)

• Large collection of assets + StaticWebAssetEndpointExclusionPattern: https://learn.microsoft.com/aspnet/core/fundamentals/static-files?view=aspnetcore-10.0#large-collection-of-assets

Acceptance criteria

• Identify candidate directories (e.g., icon/legacy image libraries) that are rarely used.
• Update .csproj with StaticWebAssetEndpointExclusionPattern (preserving $(StaticWebAssetEndpointExclusionPattern)), if needed.
• Ensure excluded assets are still served via UseStaticFiles and remain accessible.
• Verify caching behavior in Production remains correct for both sets of assets.