I don't want to pick on any particular library, as this issue can pop up with any library in any language.  I feel it's an issue which has been addressed before, but the solutions are largely ignored.  This is most likely because 1) people assume we have plenty of space or 2) the library isn't yet complete, and it's easier to statically link a big library for now, and worry about alternatives later.  If I were writing a library, I probably wouldn't be too concerned with the issue myself.

It seems there are two ways to address this problem:

1) Shared libraries.  Why not link the library dynamically instead of statically?  Is this possible with GHC?  Then multiple applications using the library wouldn't balloon the memory use, but share a copy of the same library.  For simple development and testing, it's easier to statically link, since we only have to worry about one file.  But if we expect people to run many programs using this library, we ought to be more careful about space usage.  Dynamic linking ought to be an option.

2) Linking in only what's used.  If a simple 'Hello, World!' program only needs a window and some buttons, why link in all the code for other widgets?  Is there a library format which allows pulling out only those operations which are needed?  An alternative is to recompile the library code with the program each time, throwing away dead code - that is, the library code which is never called.  Recompiling the library code with the application takes longer, but need only be done once the program is ready for distribution.

If anyone knows of existing solutions in either of these areas, please inform us.

- Lyle Kopnicky

Duncan Coutts wrote:
On Wed, 2004-05-05 at 16:24, Andrei de A. Formiga wrote:
  
   I'm finding wxHaskell very nice, and a wxWidgets
binding is something many other "advanced" languages
don't have (even OCaml). The only downside is having a
'Hello World' GUI application with 7 Mb... but it runs
quite well and smooth once it's loaded.
    

We have the same problem with gtk2hs. A stripped simple(ish) prog weighs
in at about 2.5Mb.

I'm not quite sure what's in there that makes it so big.

Duncan

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