Re: Emacs 26.1 on Windows is HUGE

[Björn Lindqvist]

Den tis 16 apr. 2019 kl 23:19 skrev Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk>:
> >> Removing the redundant executables would break things for people who
> >> want to unpack over an MSYS installation.
> >
> > Perhaps the MSYS users can be taught to run cp emacs.exe
> > emacs-26.1.exe as a post-installation command? It seems like a vastly
> > superior alternative to wasting both bandwidth and disk space for the
> > large majority of Emacs users on Windows who are not interested in
> > MSYS.
>
> Maybe. We are talking about 100Mb, which currently costs a fraction of
> the smallest unit of most currencies; so I am struggling with
> "vastly". I would guess that it is the minority of users who care about
> this; they can, of course, rm emacs-26.1.exe with no harmful effects.

Yes, if they are power users like you and me who knows that removing
that file is safe. I think for most users one file is sufficient
because it reduces bandwidth usage (I'm on a metered internet
connection so larger files are more expensive) and disk space.

As someone who don't use MSYS I don't understand the advantage of
duplicating the files? You mentioned unzipping Emacs over an MSYS
installation, but that seems a little odd. Usually on Windows you
don't install software that way. But maybe for your use case you can
use the larger emacs-26.1-x86_64.zip file? It includes a lot of
dependencies like Python2.7, Sqlite 3.20, and OpenGL headers which I
don't understand what they are doing.

> > I'm using old hardware with a small SSD which I'm happy with. I don't
> > want to have to update my hardware to accommodate Emacs growing
> > requirements.
> >
> > While the 100mb file doesn't consume more memory, it takes longer to
> > load than an 8mb executable. Compressing it would increase the load
> > time further.
>
> Likewise here I am a bit surprised. You can notice the difference
> between 100mb vs 8mb on a SSD drive?

For sure. :) But I like to waste time optimizing software so perhaps
I'm more sensitive than most. Hot start of Emacs 24.5.1 takes almost
exactly 7 seconds and of 26.1 8 seconds. I do not know how much of the
slowdown is caused by the larger executable, but I bet at least some
of it is (I will have to check after I have installed the right
version of MinGW and the right version of strip.exe). If Windows is
doing stuff in the background (like disk indexing or whatever its
services are doing) the load times increases further.

> I genuinely do not know why it is that way, although it was probably me
> that made it so. I would guess because Eli finds it easier to get better
> bug reports. Maybe it's just a mess up on my behalf. That's why I
> suggest you ask.

Will do!


--
mvh/best regards Björn Lindqvist