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You can delete data from the image if you want. We used to do it: scrub all doc strings, inlining data, etc. It's trivial. In 2022, removing a few megabytes of
by reikonomusha 5y ago
You can delete data from the image if you want. We used to do it: scrub all doc strings, inlining data, etc. It's trivial.
In 2022, removing a few megabytes of data doesn't seem worth the maintenance cost of the feature. In other words, for most users, it's a non-problem.
- oblio 5y agoTree shaking isn't data removal, it's dead code removal. And assuming he doesn't want what he wants is kind of in bad taste. You don't know his requirements.
- reikonomusha 5y agoAs far as I'm concerned, as a Lisp programmer, code is data. :) Yes, and what exactly constitutes "dead code"? Tree shakers rely on heuristics that can fail in practice. There is provably no way to remove functions from a Lisp image and guarantee your application to work. LispWorks has a "tree shaker", but has umpteen options to tame it so your application doesn't inadvertently break. Fortunately, it is possible to remove these functions if you, an application developer, so please. Nothing stops you. It's not even difficult. But SBCL has not implemented these (potentially fallible) heuristics for you, because (and only because) an insignificant number of users would find shaving a little binary size off to be valuable at the expense of program correctness.
- kazinator 5y agoIn 2022, if you're linked to libc.so, it's probably substantially bigger than your Lisp image, and so that's where you'd want the tree shaking. Good luck! The kernel supports manual tree shaking: "make menuconfig" and prune away.