[burntsushi]

> Another one is ripgrep, weighing in at 5MB compared to greps 204kb.

Did you strip both binaries? If I strip rg after compiling it, it shrinks to 2.7MB on Linux. If I strip the distributed binary on Github (which is statically linked with musl), then it shrinks to 2.4MB.

> Imagine what life will be like when we have UI toolkits like QT statically compiled into everything

I imagine Qt will be dynamically linked, so I'm not sure why you'd say that.

Of course, if you want to statically link something like Qt because it makes distribution easier for $reasons, then that's a different story. But that has nothing to do with Rust.

[flukus]

> Did you strip both binaries?

No, should I have to? I'm just looking at the published binary sizes.

> I imagine Qt will be dynamically linked, so I'm not sure why you'd say that.

I said like Qt, as in something similar written in rust. The Qt5 GUI module weighs in at about 10MB, if every gui program included it plus all the other libs then the bloat quickly adds up.

> But that has nothing to do with Rust.

Until rust has a stable ABI that doesn't require everything be statically linked it's a rust problem.

Love the brigading the rust community always does btw. Apparently someone was triggered enough to go through my comment history downvoting.

[burntsushi]

> No, should I have to?

You don't have to do anything, including publishing misleading comparisons.

> Until rust has a stable ABI that doesn't require everything be statically linked it's a rust problem.

Qt can be dynamically linked into a Rust application. For example, the default is to dynamically link glibc on Linux x86_64.

[flukus]

I'm comparing the file size of one tool to the published sized of a similar tool, how is that misleading? If the size can be reduced then why isn't it done when you publish it? Considering one is on disk size and the other is zipped I think I'm being more than fair.

>Qt can be dynamically linked into a Rust application. For example, the default is to dynamically link glibc on Linux x86_64

Again, it was an example. Show me a similar rust library that can be dynamically linked to like this? A rust equivalent will have to either use a c interface or be statically compiled.

[burntsushi]

> how is that misleading?

I explained how. Take it or leave it.

> If the size can be reduced then why isn't it done when you publish it?

Because it's not a big deal? The only people who complain about this are people debating holy wars on HN, as if the static vs dynamic trade offs haven't been well understood by now.

> Again, it was an example. Show me a similar rust library that can be dynamically linked to like this?

Rust's standard library.