RPM is 3x the size of DEB

[p-e-w]

For Atom 1.32.2 we have:

• atom.x86_64.rpm: 268 MB
• atom-amd64.deb: 86 MB

Even stranger is the recent growth, compare with Atom 1.30.0:

• atom.x86_64.rpm: 134 MB
• atom-amd64.deb: 83 MB

So in the course of just 2 releases, the RPM package has grown by 134 MB (doubled in size!) while the DEB has grown by just 3 MB, when it seems they should be more or less the same size since the architectures are the same.

What is going on here?

[rsese]

I don't remember this coming up in any discussions or issues but just noting that this difference in size for the .rpm looks like it started in 1.31.0 (260 MB): https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/tag/v1.31.0.

Going to close just for now since it's not a task to be completed at the moment, but we can re-open depending on what I hear back from the team.

---

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[p-e-w]

@rsese I found the culprit.

Unpacking the RPMs for 1.30.0 and 1.31.0 (they're just gzip archives) and deep-diving with Baobab, I noticed that the directory

/usr/share/atom/resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/dugite/git/libexec/git-core

which in Atom 1.30.0 contained 15 executables totaling 27 MB, in 1.31.0 has grown to 136 executables totaling 298 MB. It seems that a more recent version of Dugite suddenly embeds a huge suite of statically linked Git tools.

This is rather obviously bad. I have Git on my system, and that is what Atom should use. If Atom needs a specific version, it can require that via an RPM dependency. And even if for some strange reason you absolutely insist on shipping an embedded Git, all those extra binaries shouldn't be needed, especially since none of the other downloads appear to include them. And anyway, I thought Atom used libgit2?!?

So in summary, while I don't understand Atom's build process well enough to tell you exactly what happened between those two versions, I hope I have convinced you that there is a problem here and not just a question. And that as a consequence, this issue should be reopened (and fixed).

[p-e-w]

Digging some more, I found desktop/dugite-native#138, which appears to be the root cause of this issue.

Unfortunately, that issue has also been closed, without any clear indication of whether it was fixed or what the expected followup steps are. 😞

[shiftkey]

Please read the details I provided in this comment about ASAR and symlinks: desktop/dugite-native#138 (comment)

[p-e-w]

@shiftkey I did see that and understand the background. What I meant by "followup steps" is the fact that the question "Should I report this to Atom, to Electron, or are you going to take further steps here?" received only a link to the bug reporting guidelines as a response, which doesn't answer the question and I suspect might be the reason why nothing has happened since.

[shiftkey]

@p-e-w it's an Atom-specific issue so there's no point bringing it to Electron or dugite-native currently. I just wanted whoever was involved to read the guidance from the Atom maintainers before submitting an issue, to save time.

[p-e-w]

Followup issue filed at #18490.

[lock]

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