6 ms·

I've been dabbling with a desktop toy application. I have it finally "done" and am in the process of working out packaging it so folks can use it. It's written

I've been dabbling with a desktop toy application. I have it finally "done" and am in the process of working out packaging it so folks can use it. It's written in Java with JavaFX. Short term I'm reasonably comfortable with folks downloading a "fat jar" and then grabbing the JDK on their own, and, perhaps, firing off a .sh or .bat file to run it. Mostly because I don't have a Windows box to try the whole jlink or jpackage process. But then I started packaging it up for delivery. JavaFX has platform dependent shared libraries, all of which would need to be bundled in the fat jar. After building it, the result came out to 48MB... .. . This "app" is a pane with about 20 controls on it and a GO button. It's less then 2000 lines of code. And the deliverable is 48MB. I know, I know, that fancy animated GIF icon on that forum for someone's Avatar is probably 48MB. But that doesn't mean it doesn't chafe me to do so. That's not even including the JDK. I shouldn't care, but it was soul crushing. On total whimsy, I tried Flutter. I downloaded it, and built "Hello World" for macOS. Not only did it take an eternity to compile (on my modern, SSD enabled, eleventy gigablip iMac), the result was 108MB. And that was just for the Mac version, I'd need 2 others for Linux and Windows. The compile time was glacial (I know, its got hot reloading to speed things up). I'm sure the Electron vesion artifact is similar. I should just shut up and take it, but it rubs me the wrong way. I'm currently exploring the possibility of doing it as a PWA targeting Chrome, dunno how well that will work, but apparently with Chrome you can save and load local files (which is something I want to do). But I can't see my large vision being done as a PWA. I should put my head down, blinders on, and push on through. But for the moment, I'm irked.

wdroz 4y ago
My production docker image with flutter web (frontend) and Actix-web (backend) is 13 MB.
doodlesdev 4y ago
Hey if you are so desperate to the point of considering a PWA (I like them, but the support isn't good and the UX isn't good either, it's also not even supported by a few major browsers such as Firefox) check out Tauri at https://tauri.app/ https://tauri.app/ which uses the system web view and generally yields binaries of around 2MB (except if you use AppImage which is a bit larger of course).
- b1tr0t 4y ago
  Hi! I'm a PM on the Chrome web platform team working on advanced apps including PWAs. Can you tell me more about what's missing in PWAs in terms of support and UX? PWAs are well supported in Chromium browsers. Can't speak to Firefox support, but I hope as adoption and usage grows we'll see them add more support.
  - doodlesdev 4y ago
    Hi I'm happy to provide some context: When it comes to support on Chromium it works well but there a few things that still make them less than ideal such as the toolbar that includes the extensions icon and doesn't use the system styling (at least in the case of Linux with Gnome). Something else I feel would make PWAs much more interesting to most people is if the browser _prompts_ the person to use the PWA, if I'm not forgotten Chrome does this on mobile but not on desktop. You also don't really have much option when it comes to customizing the PWA if the provided manifest gives a bad icon or something like that. But overall the Chrome browser is the best for PWAs right now on both desktop and mobile. Firefox however has dropped support _completely_ for PWAs which is why I personally don't even consider it an option anymore. Some discussion here: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-pwa-progressive-web-apps/idi-p/35 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-pwa-progress... AFAIK Apple doesn't really support them too (although theoretically Steve Jobs really liked them when the iPhone first launched) because it undermines their business model of the App Store. I wish companies would use them more because they truly are the best way to develop cross-platform right now (and the PWA size is just the size of the page load for the SPA!)
    - throwawaycuriou 4y ago
      while Mozilla has dropped official support I've had no issues using FirefoxPWA addon for similar functionality
- debug-desperado 4y ago
  Tauri just hit 1.0 yesterday too. Looking forward to this saner future for packaged up web applications!
7thaccount 4y ago
Yeah, I was there was a more mainstream solution that was free/open source, could create small binaries, and have a good builtin GUI. Usually one of the 3 is missing.
elias94 4y ago
48MB? Nowadays laptop are sold with 500GB SSD and minimum of 16GB or RAM. What matters are the performances. The JVM outperforms all the electron and JS app out there. I would much prefer to download a 300MB app than use those slow JS web apps running on top of the browser.
- Tijdreiziger 4y ago
  > Nowadays laptop are sold with 500GB SSD and minimum of 16GB or RAM. I know we are living in a bubble as HNers, but this can be disproven quite easily. I opened the website of MediaMarkt (a major European electronics retailer) and clicked (literally) the first laptop I saw: https://www.mediamarkt.nl/nl/product/_acer-aspire-3-a315-35-c06g-1708906.html https://www.mediamarkt.nl/nl/product/_acer-aspire-3-a315-35-... 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD. OK, maybe you consider that one too cheap (although there must be people buying it). Let's click the first 'reasonable' one: https://www.mediamarkt.nl/nl/product/_acer-nitro-5-an515-57-529m-1711510.html https://www.mediamarkt.nl/nl/product/_acer-nitro-5-an515-57-... 512GB SSD but 'only' 8GB RAM. (And this is supposed to be a gaming laptop!)
- gregmac 4y ago
  I've never used a java app that didn't feel like a total clunker, especially with time to start up. This includes simple little utility apps, like testing SMTP servers. I won't dispute electron apps are also often slow, but there are counter examples, such as VSCode, that are actually reasonably snappy on fairly modest systems. What's the counter example that runs on JVM where I might not notice it's running on the JVM? (I'll also freely admit I've spent the last decade avoiding java apps when I can, because I've never had a pleasant experience due to the combination of performance and early-2000s aesthetic. Maybe the situation is vastly different today and it's just me that's outdated)
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    As far as Java apps that feel snappy, I would imagine Minecraft qualifies? Otherwise on the JVM in general, something like jwhois is very snappy to start up.
  - 4y ago
dlivingston 4y ago
I’ve been down a remarkably similar path to yours, and I came to the conclusion that if you want native, cross-platform, low-footprint desktop apps, then Qt is honestly the only game in town. I know there are other frameworks - imgui, for example, which uses GPU rendering for its widgets - but none that I’ve found check all the right boxes. To me, those boxes are: “I want to write an app using one framework, and when it’s done, I want the person on Mac to think it was made with AppKit; the person on Windows to think it was made with UWP; the person on Ubuntu to think it was made with GTK.” Qt is the closest I’ve found, and it’s still not totally what I want (not including it’s licensing scheme, which also is a huge turn-off).
- allanrbo 4y ago
  I like Qt too, but when it comes to packaging size, I seem to remember it was a pretty big chunk. 20 or 50 MB or something? I therefore chose wxWidgets over it, for a recent project.
- dgfitz 4y ago
  Agreed Qt is the play for desktop apps. I use it at work quite a bit, and if you’re careful enough you can just rely on upstream packaging for Linux. Windows isn’t horrible if you’re only relying on base/core and the platform plugins. It’s not tiny, but at least an order of magnitude smaller than an electron app. Mac I do not have any experience with so I can’t speak to that. It really is a fun framework to develop with and it’s signal/slot feature is a delight. I’ve recently developed a Wt web app and the learning curve was basically zero after having the Qt “expertise” I do, quoted because even after 10 years with it I’m always learning something new. The more I learn the less I know kind of thing.
- freedomben 4y ago
  This is my conclusion too. For cross platform, Qt is the only serious choice. I've been dabbling in GTK and if it's just a personal or linux app then I'll do it in GTK using javascript/typescript (and I'm very curious to try out GTK for windows/mac at some point), but for now a serious app, Qt is the real choice.
- nyanpasu64 4y ago
allanrbo 4y ago
Went through similar feelings a few years ago. Ended up going old school with C++ and wxWidgets as UI library. Felt to me like the best balance between - wanting a single code base that I could compile for Mac/Win/Linux - startup times measured in milliseconds - snappy and native looking UI - a executable size of 10MB (Mac) / 17MB (Win) / 12MB (Linux). The bulk of that exe size is the wxWidgets UI library I statically compiled in. If you wanted to get that crispy couple of hundred kilobyte sized binary you'd probably have to directly use the native UI API of each platform, and therefore be in for not being able to reuse very much between each platform. (github.com/allanrbo/filesremote if anyone wants to see the result) Real desktop app development feels like a dying art. (And arguably my use of wxWidgets made it not even "real real"). And I feel like it's not even harder than trying to shoehorn the web dev tools into desktop apps with things like Electron. It's just different and sort of forgotten it seems :-)
- na85 4y ago
  >And arguably my use of wxWidgets made it not even "real real" Doesn't wxWidgets wrap and abstract over the native APIs for each respective platform? Seems real enough to me. I once decided I'd write a GUI in pure win32 (when Windows 7 was new) and the experience really, really sucked. In my book there's no shame in using a GUI library any more than a socket library.
- rahen 4y ago
  > If you wanted to get that crispy couple of hundred kilobyte sized binary you'd probably have to directly use the native UI API of each platform, and therefore be in for not being able to reuse very much between each platform. (github.com/allanrbo/filesremote if anyone wants to see the result) No need for three different native code bases, you should simply use FLTK. It's actively maintained, works on win/lin/osx and is just 300kB when statically linked. However it doesn't look native, if this is a serious issue for you.
  - allanrbo 4y ago
    Nice! Will try FLTK for my next GUI project.
andsoitis 4y ago
For such a simple application (pane with 20 controls and a GO button, 2k lines of code), I think Lazarus (or Delphi) are fantastic solutions. Either of these two would give you Windows, Mac, and Linux coverage for your app (and in the case of Delphi, also mobile apps). * Lazarus - https://www.lazarus-ide.org https://www.lazarus-ide.org * Delphi - https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi
DomesticMouse 4y ago
> On total whimsy, I tried Flutter. I downloaded it, and built "Hello World" for macOS. Not only did it take an eternity to compile (on my modern, SSD enabled, eleventy gigablip iMac), the result was 108MB. And that was just for the Mac version, I'd need 2 others for Linux and Windows. The compile time was glacial (I know, its got hot reloading to speed things up). I'm curious how you got 108mb. Here's what I'm seeing: $ flutter --version Flutter 3.0.4 • channel stable • https://github.com/flutter/flutter Framework • revision 85684f9300 (7 days ago) • 2022-06-30 13:22:47 -0700 Engine • revision 6ba2af10bb Tools • Dart 2.17.5 • DevTools 2.12.2 $ flutter create hello_world && cd hello_world Creating project hello_world... Running "flutter pub get" in hello_world... 1,764ms Wrote 127 files. All done! In order to run your application, type: $ cd hello_world $ flutter run Your application code is in hello_world/lib/main.dart. $ flutter build macos Building with sound null safety Building macOS application... $ du -ah build/macos/Build/Products/Release/hello_world.app | tail -1 44M build/macos/Build/Products/Release/hello_world.app Note, the release build is significantly smaller than the debug build, which includes a full Dart VM for hot swapping application code: $ flutter build macos --debug Building with sound null safety Building macOS application... $ du -ah build/macos/Build/Products/Debug/hello_world.app | tail -1 98M build/macos/Build/Products/Debug/hello_world.app Note, on the glacial compiles, here is what I'm seeing on my M1 mac laptop: $ time flutter build macos Building with sound null safety Building macOS application... flutter build macos 1.20s user 0.59s system 47% cpu 3.801 total It's slower than building web pages in vim, but this is comparable with compiling desktop applications in Xcode. Disclosure: I'm a Developer Relations Engineer for Flutter
- cercatrova 4y ago
  44 megabytes is still quite large, is what the parent is trying to say. I don't know enough about binary sizes but it seems that it could be smaller.
  - izacus 4y ago
    No, the parent is trying to say that hello world is 108MB which is not true at all. Hard to make a good point about binary size when they outright lie.
freedomben 4y ago
As a potential user, I'm typically really pleased with a fat jar download option! In an age where desktop apps are less common, we beggars can't be choosers anymore so 50 MB is perfectly acceptable. I mostly use Qt these days though for desktop apps I build. It takes a minute to learn but once you get the basics down you're off to the races. And the cross platform story is awesome. I literally don't even test on windows or mac anymore until right before a release, because if it works on my linux dev machine, it's gonna work on windows/mac.
abraxas 4y ago
I recall building my first FLTK app in 1998 and being somewhat dismayed that it was more than 1.2 MB in size. With some craftiness I had it down to just under a Meg. It was a 3D model viewer that allowed me to load some common 3d files including vrml and do some basic manipulation like picking a face, moving it, changing its color etc. This was all in a single static executable. Maybe OpenGL was linked dynamically don't remember. What the fuck happened in the last quarter century? The desktop apps of today that do little more than my viewer take three orders of magnitude more space and run slower than my thing did on a 350MHz Pentium (GPU performance excepted as there have been impressive progress on that side). And yeah, no they are not "fast enough".
- m_mueller 4y ago
  15 years ago I was able to do Skype group calls just fine on the hardware available then. Since then, camera resolutions have hardly improved and yet MS Teams grinds everything else to a halt when a call starts. Just another example of things regressing. I think it has to do with a move away from tools that do one thing well to these Kraken platforms that want to eat your life.
  - 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
    Counterpoint: Coolplayer (http://coolplayer.sourceforge.net/ http://coolplayer.sourceforge.net/) is a fairly capable MP3 player, weighing in at ~500 KB. I've used it to play MP3's on 486's back in the day. The closest modern equivalent would be Foobar2000. Foobar2000 is much larger than Coolplayer ever was, but it's also far more capable, has plugin support etc. On the other hand, both players are small compared to some modern alternatives.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
flakiness 4y ago
> I know, I know, that fancy animated GIF icon on that forum for someone's Avatar is probably 48MB. I know you are trolling but I cannot keep myself from reacting. Well done!
barbarbar 4y ago
Would it be possible to use Swing and make a runtime image with only the minimal modules needed?
kelnos 4y ago
Not sure what you've tried, but here are a few more options with the Java version: Try ProGuard, which can remove classes that aren't being used from your fat JAR. Sometimes you'll have to tweak the configuration to keep classes that it doesn't realize are being used, though (due to reflection use or whatever). Try GraalVM, which can compile the entire thing to a native binary without a dependency on a JVM, even. I believe this will mean a separate build for each platform you want to support, though. Not sure if these will lower the size of the download, but they're worth a try.

wdroz 4y ago

My production docker image with flutter web (frontend) and Actix-web (backend) is 13 MB.

doodlesdev 4y ago

Hey if you are so desperate to the point of considering a PWA (I like them, but the support isn't good and the UX isn't good either, it's also not even supported by a few major browsers such as Firefox) check out Tauri at https://tauri.app/ https://tauri.app/ which uses the system web view and generally yields binaries of around 2MB (except if you use AppImage which is a bit larger of course).

b1tr0t 4y ago
Hi! I'm a PM on the Chrome web platform team working on advanced apps including PWAs. Can you tell me more about what's missing in PWAs in terms of support and UX? PWAs are well supported in Chromium browsers. Can't speak to Firefox support, but I hope as adoption and usage grows we'll see them add more support.
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  Hi I'm happy to provide some context: When it comes to support on Chromium it works well but there a few things that still make them less than ideal such as the toolbar that includes the extensions icon and doesn't use the system styling (at least in the case of Linux with Gnome). Something else I feel would make PWAs much more interesting to most people is if the browser _prompts_ the person to use the PWA, if I'm not forgotten Chrome does this on mobile but not on desktop. You also don't really have much option when it comes to customizing the PWA if the provided manifest gives a bad icon or something like that. But overall the Chrome browser is the best for PWAs right now on both desktop and mobile. Firefox however has dropped support _completely_ for PWAs which is why I personally don't even consider it an option anymore. Some discussion here: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-pwa-progressive-web-apps/idi-p/35 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-pwa-progress... AFAIK Apple doesn't really support them too (although theoretically Steve Jobs really liked them when the iPhone first launched) because it undermines their business model of the App Store. I wish companies would use them more because they truly are the best way to develop cross-platform right now (and the PWA size is just the size of the page load for the SPA!)
  - throwawaycuriou 4y ago
    while Mozilla has dropped official support I've had no issues using FirefoxPWA addon for similar functionality
debug-desperado 4y ago
Tauri just hit 1.0 yesterday too. Looking forward to this saner future for packaged up web applications!

7thaccount 4y ago

Yeah, I was there was a more mainstream solution that was free/open source, could create small binaries, and have a good builtin GUI. Usually one of the 3 is missing.

elias94 4y ago

48MB? Nowadays laptop are sold with 500GB SSD and minimum of 16GB or RAM. What matters are the performances. The JVM outperforms all the electron and JS app out there. I would much prefer to download a 300MB app than use those slow JS web apps running on top of the browser.

Tijdreiziger 4y ago
> Nowadays laptop are sold with 500GB SSD and minimum of 16GB or RAM. I know we are living in a bubble as HNers, but this can be disproven quite easily. I opened the website of MediaMarkt (a major European electronics retailer) and clicked (literally) the first laptop I saw: https://www.mediamarkt.nl/nl/product/_acer-aspire-3-a315-35-c06g-1708906.html https://www.mediamarkt.nl/nl/product/_acer-aspire-3-a315-35-... 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD. OK, maybe you consider that one too cheap (although there must be people buying it). Let's click the first 'reasonable' one: https://www.mediamarkt.nl/nl/product/_acer-nitro-5-an515-57-529m-1711510.html https://www.mediamarkt.nl/nl/product/_acer-nitro-5-an515-57-... 512GB SSD but 'only' 8GB RAM. (And this is supposed to be a gaming laptop!)
gregmac 4y ago
I've never used a java app that didn't feel like a total clunker, especially with time to start up. This includes simple little utility apps, like testing SMTP servers. I won't dispute electron apps are also often slow, but there are counter examples, such as VSCode, that are actually reasonably snappy on fairly modest systems. What's the counter example that runs on JVM where I might not notice it's running on the JVM? (I'll also freely admit I've spent the last decade avoiding java apps when I can, because I've never had a pleasant experience due to the combination of performance and early-2000s aesthetic. Maybe the situation is vastly different today and it's just me that's outdated)
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  As far as Java apps that feel snappy, I would imagine Minecraft qualifies? Otherwise on the JVM in general, something like jwhois is very snappy to start up.
- 4y ago

dlivingston 4y ago

I’ve been down a remarkably similar path to yours, and I came to the conclusion that if you want native, cross-platform, low-footprint desktop apps, then Qt is honestly the only game in town. I know there are other frameworks - imgui, for example, which uses GPU rendering for its widgets - but none that I’ve found check all the right boxes. To me, those boxes are: “I want to write an app using one framework, and when it’s done, I want the person on Mac to think it was made with AppKit; the person on Windows to think it was made with UWP; the person on Ubuntu to think it was made with GTK.” Qt is the closest I’ve found, and it’s still not totally what I want (not including it’s licensing scheme, which also is a huge turn-off).

allanrbo 4y ago
I like Qt too, but when it comes to packaging size, I seem to remember it was a pretty big chunk. 20 or 50 MB or something? I therefore chose wxWidgets over it, for a recent project.
dgfitz 4y ago
Agreed Qt is the play for desktop apps. I use it at work quite a bit, and if you’re careful enough you can just rely on upstream packaging for Linux. Windows isn’t horrible if you’re only relying on base/core and the platform plugins. It’s not tiny, but at least an order of magnitude smaller than an electron app. Mac I do not have any experience with so I can’t speak to that. It really is a fun framework to develop with and it’s signal/slot feature is a delight. I’ve recently developed a Wt web app and the learning curve was basically zero after having the Qt “expertise” I do, quoted because even after 10 years with it I’m always learning something new. The more I learn the less I know kind of thing.
freedomben 4y ago
This is my conclusion too. For cross platform, Qt is the only serious choice. I've been dabbling in GTK and if it's just a personal or linux app then I'll do it in GTK using javascript/typescript (and I'm very curious to try out GTK for windows/mac at some point), but for now a serious app, Qt is the real choice.
nyanpasu64 4y ago

allanrbo 4y ago

Went through similar feelings a few years ago. Ended up going old school with C++ and wxWidgets as UI library. Felt to me like the best balance between - wanting a single code base that I could compile for Mac/Win/Linux - startup times measured in milliseconds - snappy and native looking UI - a executable size of 10MB (Mac) / 17MB (Win) / 12MB (Linux). The bulk of that exe size is the wxWidgets UI library I statically compiled in. If you wanted to get that crispy couple of hundred kilobyte sized binary you'd probably have to directly use the native UI API of each platform, and therefore be in for not being able to reuse very much between each platform. (github.com/allanrbo/filesremote if anyone wants to see the result) Real desktop app development feels like a dying art. (And arguably my use of wxWidgets made it not even "real real"). And I feel like it's not even harder than trying to shoehorn the web dev tools into desktop apps with things like Electron. It's just different and sort of forgotten it seems :-)

na85 4y ago
>And arguably my use of wxWidgets made it not even "real real" Doesn't wxWidgets wrap and abstract over the native APIs for each respective platform? Seems real enough to me. I once decided I'd write a GUI in pure win32 (when Windows 7 was new) and the experience really, really sucked. In my book there's no shame in using a GUI library any more than a socket library.
rahen 4y ago
> If you wanted to get that crispy couple of hundred kilobyte sized binary you'd probably have to directly use the native UI API of each platform, and therefore be in for not being able to reuse very much between each platform. (github.com/allanrbo/filesremote if anyone wants to see the result) No need for three different native code bases, you should simply use FLTK. It's actively maintained, works on win/lin/osx and is just 300kB when statically linked. However it doesn't look native, if this is a serious issue for you.
- allanrbo 4y ago
  Nice! Will try FLTK for my next GUI project.

andsoitis 4y ago

For such a simple application (pane with 20 controls and a GO button, 2k lines of code), I think Lazarus (or Delphi) are fantastic solutions. Either of these two would give you Windows, Mac, and Linux coverage for your app (and in the case of Delphi, also mobile apps). * Lazarus - https://www.lazarus-ide.org https://www.lazarus-ide.org * Delphi - https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi

DomesticMouse 4y ago

> On total whimsy, I tried Flutter. I downloaded it, and built "Hello World" for macOS. Not only did it take an eternity to compile (on my modern, SSD enabled, eleventy gigablip iMac), the result was 108MB. And that was just for the Mac version, I'd need 2 others for Linux and Windows. The compile time was glacial (I know, its got hot reloading to speed things up). I'm curious how you got 108mb. Here's what I'm seeing: $ flutter --version Flutter 3.0.4 • channel stable • https://github.com/flutter/flutter Framework • revision 85684f9300 (7 days ago) • 2022-06-30 13:22:47 -0700 Engine • revision 6ba2af10bb Tools • Dart 2.17.5 • DevTools 2.12.2 $ flutter create hello_world && cd hello_world Creating project hello_world... Running "flutter pub get" in hello_world... 1,764ms Wrote 127 files. All done! In order to run your application, type: $ cd hello_world $ flutter run Your application code is in hello_world/lib/main.dart. $ flutter build macos Building with sound null safety Building macOS application... $ du -ah build/macos/Build/Products/Release/hello_world.app | tail -1 44M build/macos/Build/Products/Release/hello_world.app Note, the release build is significantly smaller than the debug build, which includes a full Dart VM for hot swapping application code: $ flutter build macos --debug Building with sound null safety Building macOS application... $ du -ah build/macos/Build/Products/Debug/hello_world.app | tail -1 98M build/macos/Build/Products/Debug/hello_world.app Note, on the glacial compiles, here is what I'm seeing on my M1 mac laptop: $ time flutter build macos Building with sound null safety Building macOS application... flutter build macos 1.20s user 0.59s system 47% cpu 3.801 total It's slower than building web pages in vim, but this is comparable with compiling desktop applications in Xcode. Disclosure: I'm a Developer Relations Engineer for Flutter

cercatrova 4y ago
44 megabytes is still quite large, is what the parent is trying to say. I don't know enough about binary sizes but it seems that it could be smaller.
- izacus 4y ago
  No, the parent is trying to say that hello world is 108MB which is not true at all. Hard to make a good point about binary size when they outright lie.

freedomben 4y ago

As a potential user, I'm typically really pleased with a fat jar download option! In an age where desktop apps are less common, we beggars can't be choosers anymore so 50 MB is perfectly acceptable. I mostly use Qt these days though for desktop apps I build. It takes a minute to learn but once you get the basics down you're off to the races. And the cross platform story is awesome. I literally don't even test on windows or mac anymore until right before a release, because if it works on my linux dev machine, it's gonna work on windows/mac.

abraxas 4y ago

I recall building my first FLTK app in 1998 and being somewhat dismayed that it was more than 1.2 MB in size. With some craftiness I had it down to just under a Meg. It was a 3D model viewer that allowed me to load some common 3d files including vrml and do some basic manipulation like picking a face, moving it, changing its color etc. This was all in a single static executable. Maybe OpenGL was linked dynamically don't remember. What the fuck happened in the last quarter century? The desktop apps of today that do little more than my viewer take three orders of magnitude more space and run slower than my thing did on a 350MHz Pentium (GPU performance excepted as there have been impressive progress on that side). And yeah, no they are not "fast enough".

m_mueller 4y ago
15 years ago I was able to do Skype group calls just fine on the hardware available then. Since then, camera resolutions have hardly improved and yet MS Teams grinds everything else to a halt when a call starts. Just another example of things regressing. I think it has to do with a move away from tools that do one thing well to these Kraken platforms that want to eat your life.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
  Counterpoint: Coolplayer (http://coolplayer.sourceforge.net/ http://coolplayer.sourceforge.net/) is a fairly capable MP3 player, weighing in at ~500 KB. I've used it to play MP3's on 486's back in the day. The closest modern equivalent would be Foobar2000. Foobar2000 is much larger than Coolplayer ever was, but it's also far more capable, has plugin support etc. On the other hand, both players are small compared to some modern alternatives.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

flakiness 4y ago

> I know, I know, that fancy animated GIF icon on that forum for someone's Avatar is probably 48MB. I know you are trolling but I cannot keep myself from reacting. Well done!

barbarbar 4y ago

Would it be possible to use Swing and make a runtime image with only the minimal modules needed?

kelnos 4y ago

Not sure what you've tried, but here are a few more options with the Java version: Try ProGuard, which can remove classes that aren't being used from your fat JAR. Sometimes you'll have to tweak the configuration to keep classes that it doesn't realize are being used, though (due to reflection use or whatever). Try GraalVM, which can compile the entire thing to a native binary without a dependency on a JVM, even. I believe this will mean a separate build for each platform you want to support, though. Not sure if these will lower the size of the download, but they're worth a try.