Why Build Relocation Breaks Next.js 14 Deployments

Self-hosted Next.js 14 applications using atomic deployments often encounter React Client Manifest errors—not from a bundler bug, but from absolute paths in the build manifest conflicting with runtime module resolution. This discovery is crucial for developers implementing zero-downtime deployment strategies, as the root cause goes undocumented and leads to costly misdiagnosis. Understanding this path relocation issue directly improves deployment reliability for production Next.js applications.