4 ms·

Ok I know the software-today-is-so-bloated trope is overplayed but... "the UNIX way"? The compiled Linux x86_64 binary is 7 megabytes. All of System V combined

• packetslave 8y ago
  SVR4 came out 30 years ago. I think it's time to let it go.
  • gok 8y ago
    I'm fine with letting it go! I just don't understand why they're claiming this is "the UNIX way" as if that's a good thing.
    • thaumaturgy 8y ago
      I hate to be trollbait, but: "the Unix way" is less about the size of programs, and more about programs being built as composable, modular components that interact together over a common interface. Curious people can read more about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy or https://homepage.cs.uri.edu/~thenry/resources/unix_art/ch01s06.html https://homepage.cs.uri.edu/~thenry/resources/unix_art/ch01s... The websocketd site outlines this fairly well with the big quote on their homepage. Looked at another way, a Unix-like ecosystem satisfies two of the principles of a SOLID software architecture: the Single Responsibility Principle and (arguably) the Open-Closed Principle. If websocketd focuses on handling the nuts and bolts of websocket connections and invoking other programs and piping data into and out of them over a standard interface, then it's a Unix-like architecture, even if it's a fat, monolithic, statically linked binary.
    • throw2016 8y ago
      The unix way is 'decoupled microservices', breaking down components in to small pieces for reuse, it continues to be used and reinvented in different contexts. Both monolith and decoupled components have their cheerleaders but simply dismissing either as 'not a good thing' doesn't add anything to the debate.
  • cat199 8y ago
    Aah the joys of false progressivism. I hear that representing the absence of value as a number was invented about 6000 years ago, perhaps we should abandon that as antiquated as well.. also, to wit, a Unix kernel of recent vintage: $ uname -msr OpenBSD 6.3 amd64 $ du -skc bsd.rd bsd 9664 bsd.rd 12912 bsd 22576 total vs, say, a Linux kernel of recent vintage: $ uname -msr Linux 4.9.0-8-amd64 x86_64 $ du -skc /boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-8-amd64 /boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-8-amd64 /lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64 4152 /boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-8-amd64 21616 /boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-8-amd64 212248 /lib/modules/4.9.0-8-amd64 238016 total yes, there are likely more drivers in the latter. highly doubt there is an order of magnitude more though. not to mention some 'modern' npm+webpack monstrosity. that said, given the latter, i can hardly fault a <10Mb go executable as 'excessive', so you're right on that front.
    • khanan 8y ago
      This turned me on.
    • ben_bai 8y ago
      Fun fact: OpenBSD 6.4 /bsd kernel can be shrunk from 14.8MB to 6.6MB. With gzip.
    • icebraining 8y ago
      > yes, there are likely more drivers in the latter. highly doubt there is an order of magnitude more though. That's exactly what they are; ~180M of those 212M are in drivers/. And even outside that, it includes stuff like fs/ocfs2, which I don't think OpenBSD supports.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
• mcpherrinm 8y ago
  Is unix defined as having small binaries? I don't think that's true. Yes, it's statically linked and as a result somewhat large. This is a program built around executing programs and communicating over pipes. It's composing programs together. I think that's certainly UNIX-ish.
  • hnarn 8y ago
    > Is unix defined as having small binaries? I don't think that's true. Yes, it's statically linked and as a result somewhat large. No, but literally the first point is: > Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features. It's not hard to see how this would apply to libraries, and how including third party code in your binary would break this idea because you're essentially "freezing" the application in time. Your definition regarding "composing programs together" is not all that makes a program UNIX-ish.
    • kingosticks 8y ago
      It then goes on to list a whole load of feature creep so the claim of doing one thing is a bit ridiculous.
• dpwm 8y ago
  > Written in Go I have a fairly simple web-app written in go – no websockets, just net/http. I just checked and the binary size is 6.8 megabytes. There's a lot in there. For starters, there's the go runtime. Then there's the HTTP server. I suspect there may be ways to improve on the binary size if it mattered so much. xz gets it down to 2.1MB, suggesting there's some redundancy in there.
  • marcrosoft 8y ago
    You can cut your binary size almost in half on Linux by removing debug information and symbols with: `go build -ldflags="-s -w"`
    • Something1234 8y ago
      I thought it was dangerous to use `strip` on any go binaries, because it would result in an incorrect program. LDFlags might cause something else but isn't it the same concept?
  • cdoxsey 8y ago
    It's certainly an issue, especially now with wasm: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/27266 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/27266 Probably unavoidable for this kind of app though. Unicode alone involves a whole lot of data tables that are going to be hard to get rid of unless they're dynamically linked. 7MB is still a lot smaller than Docker containers :)
• cat199 8y ago
  ... and yet Unix was critiqued for being written in a high level language instead of assembler
  • pjmlp 8y ago
    UNIX was originally written in Assembly, B and C came later. And why should it be criticized? Outside AT&T, people were writing OSes in high level languages since 1961.
• chungy 8y ago
  It's kind of just the way golang's compiler statically compiles everything. If you use gccgo, you can get a 762KiB binary easily.