Describe the bug

In our project we use object-inspect package as a one of dependencies. It contains following code:

// index.js
var utilInspect = require('./util.inspect');
var inspectCustom = utilInspect.custom;
var inspectSymbol = isSymbol(inspectCustom) ? inspectCustom : null;

// package.json
"browser": {
    "./util.inspect.js": false
  },

so it's expected than when building browser application it shouldn't use this file. However when using build in development mode it fails in runtime with the following exception:

Uncaught Error: Module "" has been externalized for browser compatibility. Cannot access ".custom" in client code.

Production build works just fine.

Reproduction

https://github.com/lukaszwlazly/vite-playground

Steps to reproduce

1. Run npm install
2. Run npm run build:development
3. Run npm run server
4. Open any link used by the local server and check devtools

When in 2. one use npm run build, there is no exception in dev tools.

System Info

System:
    OS: Linux 6.17 Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS 24.04.4 LTS (Noble Numbat)
    CPU: (20) x64 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-13700H
    Memory: 13.93 GB / 30.99 GB
    Container: Yes
    Shell: 5.9 - /usr/bin/zsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 24.12.0 - /home/lwlazly/.nvm/versions/node/v24.12.0/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.22 - /home/lwlazly/.nvm/versions/node/v24.12.0/bin/yarn
    npm: 11.6.2 - /home/lwlazly/.nvm/versions/node/v24.12.0/bin/npm
  Browsers:
    Chrome: 146.0.7680.153
    Chromium: 146.0.7680.80
    Firefox: 148.0.2
    Firefox Developer Edition: 148.0.2
  npmPackages:
    vite: ^8.0.2 => 8.0.2

Used Package Manager

npm

Logs

No response

Validations

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• Read the Contributing Guidelines.
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• The provided reproduction is a minimal reproducible example of the bug.