The problem
There is a longstanding issue with extremely slow cold-start times when using the official Nodejs Firestore library in serverless environments: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/158014637. It appears that the underlying issue is very difficult to address (hence the unresolved years-old P1/S1 issue), and a proper interim fix is long overdue.
One solution is to use the Firestore REST API directly. This dramatically improves cold start times, but at the cost of a seriously degraded developer experience. There has been at least one attempt by a Firestore user to create an unofficial wrapper library (https://github.com/bountyrush/nodejs-firestore). This library works, but is maintained by a single developer, and is not a replacement for an official library for obvious reasons.
The solution
A lightweight wrapper library that adds a friendly interface to the Firestore REST API for simple CRUD operations would do a lot to ameliorate the three year old cold start bug. Essentially a Nodejs equivalent of the Firestore Lite SDK. A Google employee has suggested that this library might even be able to share significant code with Firestore Lite: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/158014637#comment183
The problem
There is a longstanding issue with extremely slow cold-start times when using the official Nodejs Firestore library in serverless environments: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/158014637. It appears that the underlying issue is very difficult to address (hence the unresolved years-old P1/S1 issue), and a proper interim fix is long overdue.
One solution is to use the Firestore REST API directly. This dramatically improves cold start times, but at the cost of a seriously degraded developer experience. There has been at least one attempt by a Firestore user to create an unofficial wrapper library (https://github.com/bountyrush/nodejs-firestore). This library works, but is maintained by a single developer, and is not a replacement for an official library for obvious reasons.
The solution
A lightweight wrapper library that adds a friendly interface to the Firestore REST API for simple CRUD operations would do a lot to ameliorate the three year old cold start bug. Essentially a Nodejs equivalent of the Firestore Lite SDK. A Google employee has suggested that this library might even be able to share significant code with Firestore Lite: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/158014637#comment183