id,summary,reporter,owner,description,type,status,priority,milestone,component,version,resolution,keywords,cc,os,architecture,failure,difficulty,testcase,blockedby,blocking,related
6042,GHC is bloated,simonmar,pcapriotti,"I noticed today that our binary dists are getting bigger:

{{{
-rw-rw-r-- 1 simonmar GHC 118924739 2010-11-17 04:02 ghc-7.0.1-i386-unknown-linux.tar.bz2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 simonmar GHC 112074889 2011-03-02 04:19 ghc-7.0.2-i386-unknown-linux.tar.bz2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 simonmar GHC 109012585 2011-03-27 05:21 ghc-7.0.3-i386-unknown-linux.tar.bz2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 simonmar GHC 109012197 2011-06-15 04:25 ghc-7.0.4-i386-unknown-linux.tar.bz2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 simonmar GHC 115102248 2011-08-10 03:17 ghc-7.2.1-i386-unknown-linux.tar.bz2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 simonmar GHC 114428608 2011-11-10 04:28 ghc-7.2.2-i386-unknown-linux.tar.bz2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 simonmar GHC 123417972 2012-04-20 04:23 ghc-7.4.1.20120416-i386-unknown-linux.tar.bz2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 simonmar GHC 144861355 2012-04-18 06:25 ghc-7.5.20120413-i386-unknown-linux.tar.bz2
}}}

I looked into the difference between 7.0.4 and 7.4.1, and found that it seems to be mostly caused by GHC itself getting bigger:

{{{
-rwxrwxr-x simonmar/GHC 31280127 2011-06-14 19:59 ghc-7.0.4/ghc/stage2/build/tmp/ghc-stage2
-rwxrwxr-x simonmar/GHC 41050757 2012-04-19 20:12 ghc-7.4.1/ghc/stage2/build/tmp/ghc-stage2
}}}

the GHC binary is 25% larger, and the binary dist contains several copies of GHC (.a, _p.a, .so, the GHC binary, haddock).

We didn't add 25% more code to GHC between 7.0.4 and 7.4.1, so why is it 25% larger?  This increase isn't reflected in other libraries - in fact, the base package is smaller in 7.4.1 than 7.0.4.

I have a horrid feeling that this is due to heavy use of INLINE/INLINABLE in `containers`, but I hope I'm wrong.",bug,closed,highest,7.6.1,Compiler,7.4.1,invalid,,tibbe milan,Unknown/Multiple,Unknown/Multiple,None/Unknown,Unknown,,,,