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by humbledrone 5053 days ago
Uh, is "being easy to statically compile" some benchmark for simplicity that I've never heard of?

Also, what do you care if git is 230MB? Do they even make thumb drives that small any more?

2 comments

> Uh, is "being easy to statically compile" some benchmark for simplicity that I've never heard of?

Yes. It's not the benchmark, but it's a benchmark.

Thank you Maro. I've never understood why static linking and easy compilation, not to mention being concerned with file sizes, upsets certain people when mentioned on mailing lists and forums. But it always does.
a 230MB executable is no fun.. it needs to be read from disk to be executed, and bigger code means worse cache use (for instructions) when running.
It's 115 links to a 2 MB executable. The actual on-disk size is 2 MB.
Right.

I feel stupid that I did not realise this. I am a big fan of crunched binaries, actually. That guy at U of Maryland who introduced it to BSD in the early 90's is a software hero in my book. For Linux fans, I guess your hero would be Bruce Perens or whoever was behind Busybox.

Anyway I've learned something more about git from admitting my error. Thank you HN!

You know what's funny? I made the same mistake a year or two ago. :)