28% binary size increase from v6.1.0 to v6.2.0 (with default configure options)

[mhart]

The node binary has increased in size quite noticeably from v6.1.0 to v6.2.0. Incremental size increases have been happening as more functionality's been added obviously, but this is quite a jump for a minor release.

$ docker run mhart/alpine-node:6.1.0 ls -l /usr/bin/node
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root      22341392 May  6 16:31 /usr/bin/node
$ docker run mhart/alpine-node:6.2.0 ls -l /usr/bin/node
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root      28704480 May 17 23:05 /usr/bin/node

(28.48% increase)

When compiled with --fully-static:

$ docker run mhart/alpine-node:base-6.1.0 ls -l /usr/bin/node
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root      24726456 May  6 17:04 /usr/bin/node
$ docker run mhart/alpine-node:base-6.2.0 ls -l /usr/bin/node
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root      30255656 May 17 23:27 /usr/bin/node

(22.36% increase)

Is this just something we have to live with, or has something gone awry here?

[mhart]

Hmmm, I just checked using the official node images, and there doesn't seem to be the same discrepancy. My bad.

$ docker run node:6.1.0 ls -l /usr/local/bin/node
-rwxrwxr-x 1 500 500 27368828 May  5 21:41 /usr/local/bin/node
$ docker run node:6.2.0 ls -l /usr/local/bin/node
-rwxrwxr-x 1 500 500 27459658 May 17 19:40 /usr/local/bin/node

I'll dig into whether something's changed on my end.

But does anyone have any idea why this may have happened on Alpine (musl)?

[bnoordhuis]

Did you upgrade your toolchain (compiler, linker, binutils) in between?

[mhart]

@bnoordhuis I don't think this could be the cause – building v6.1.0 with the same toolchain as I used for v6.2.0 results in the same filesize reported above (21.3MB for v6.1.0)

Are (or were) the official node builds using any configure flags in particular?

[mscdex]

I'm betting this is because of the recent inclusion of small-icu data. @mhart Did you try building with --without-intl and seeing if that reduces the binary back to about what it was before?

[MylesBorins]

@mscdex that was where the hunt began. Turns out --without-intl was acutally broken and only recently fixed in #6820

with that patch applied it sounded like we were still having the large binary size

[mhart]

@mscdex were the official builds including this ICU stuff before? Just wondering why they didn't change (apparently)

[mscdex]

@mhart I don't believe so. I think node v6.2.0 is the first version to include icu data by default and IIRC the precompiled binaries use defaults.

Looking at the commits that went into v6.2.0, icu is the only thing that could have impacted binary size. I don't know if there is an easy way to double check that there is no icu data in the binary.... strings perhaps?

[MylesBorins]

@mscdex I'm pretty sure our official builds always came with icu
just double checked and v4.4.4 has icu 56.1

node -e "console.log(process.versions)" | grep icu

[mscdex]

@thealphanerd Ah ok.

[mhart]

Yeah, that would be it then.

$ docker run node:6.1.0 node -e "console.log(process.versions)" | grep icu
  icu: '56.1',
$ docker run mhart/alpine-node:6.1.0 node -e "console.log(process.versions)" | grep icu
# nothing
$ docker run mhart/alpine-node:6.2.0 node -e "console.log(process.versions)" | grep icu
  icu: '57.1',

Ugh... now need to figure out if I explicitly exclude it... considering it was before...

[mhart]

Is there some documentation somewhere about how the official builds are configured? I always just assumed they used defaults and didn't pass anything special to ./configure