go-ipfs binary is too large

[caioalonso]

Seeing as we are gearing up towards self-hosting releases and autoupdating them, I think it would be interesting to reduce the ipfs binary size.

Go is not compatible by default with upx, but https://github.com/pwaller/goupx fixes that. Maybe we could use it?

A preliminary test with the code in master gives me a 75% reduction in binary size:

$ du -h ipfs
24M     ipfs
$ goupx ipfs
(...)
$ du -h ipfs
6.1M    ipfs

And using the --strip-binary option, even more:

$ du -h ipfs
24M     ipfs
$ goupx --strip-binary ipfs
(...)
$ du -h ipfs
4.5M    ipfs

[whyrusleeping]

what is being removed? Go's binaries are large because they are statically compiled. I assume that all of that space is code, and I was also under the assumption that the compiler removed unused code.

I'm skeptical that you can get such a reduction in size without any adverse side effects.

[jbenet]

I suspect there's a ton from debugging symbols.

—
Sent from Mailbox

On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 10:31 AM, Caio Alonso notifications@github.com
wrote:

Seeing as we are gearing up towards self-hosting releases and autoupdating them, I think it would be interesting to reduce the ipfs binary size.
Go is not compatible by default with upx, but https://github.com/pwaller/goupx fixes that. Maybe we could use it?
A preliminary test with the code in master gives me a 75% reduction in binary size:

$ du -h ipfs
24M     ipfs
$ goupx ipfs
(...)
$ du -h ipfs
6.1M    ipfs

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#1855

[whyrusleeping]

well if we remove those, then all the panics will be illegible and useless for debugging anything. (if that is in fact whats taking up all the space)

[caioalonso]

@whyrusleeping there's some discussion about this here: golang/go#6853

[ghost]

Wow, that's some weird copyright header! https://github.com/pwaller/goupx/blob/master/hemfix/hemfix.go

All rights reserved, based on code found somewhere, and GPL! :)

[Kubuxu]

I close it as #2097 is more developed.

The goupx is no longer needed in case of Go1.6