Whats the reason for apk add vips to install many other libraries?

[FluffyDiscord]

I am inspecting my docker images and I found out that the default apk add vips command in Alpine installs a lot of other libraries which I thought were not needed because the vips itself would be self sufficient binary without external needs. Have I been mistaken? I am using vips in context of php, so ultimately php-vips.

It's additional 112MB of data.

/ # apk add vips
(1/65) Installing libgcc (13.2.1_git20231014-r0)
(2/65) Installing libstdc++ (13.2.1_git20231014-r0)
(3/65) Installing openexr-libiex (3.1.12-r0)
(4/65) Installing openexr-libilmthread (3.1.12-r0)
(5/65) Installing libbz2 (1.0.8-r6)
(6/65) Installing libexpat (2.6.2-r0)
(7/65) Installing libffi (3.4.4-r3)
(8/65) Installing gdbm (1.23-r1)
(9/65) Installing xz-libs (5.4.5-r0)
(10/65) Installing mpdecimal (2.5.1-r2)
(11/65) Installing libpanelw (6.4_p20231125-r0)
(12/65) Installing sqlite-libs (3.44.2-r0)
(13/65) Installing python3 (3.11.8-r0)
(14/65) Installing python3-pycache-pyc0 (3.11.8-r0)
(15/65) Installing pyc (3.11.8-r0)
(16/65) Installing python3-pyc (3.11.8-r0)
(17/65) Installing boost1.82-python3 (1.82.0-r3)
(18/65) Installing imath (3.1.9-r3)
(19/65) Installing openexr-libopenexr (3.1.12-r0)
(20/65) Installing libxau (1.0.11-r3)
(21/65) Installing libmd (1.1.0-r0)
(22/65) Installing libbsd (0.11.7-r3)
(23/65) Installing libxdmcp (1.1.4-r3)
(24/65) Installing libxcb (1.16-r0)
(25/65) Installing libx11 (1.8.7-r0)
(26/65) Installing libxext (1.3.5-r3)
(27/65) Installing libxrender (0.9.11-r4)
(28/65) Installing libpng (1.6.40-r0)
(29/65) Installing freetype (2.13.2-r0)
(30/65) Installing fontconfig (2.14.2-r4)
(31/65) Installing pixman (0.42.2-r2)
(32/65) Installing cairo (1.18.0-r0)
(33/65) Installing cfitsio (4.3.1-r0)
(34/65) Installing cgif (0.3.2-r0)
(35/65) Installing libexif (0.6.24-r2)
(36/65) Installing fftw-double-libs (3.3.10-r5)
(37/65) Installing libintl (0.22.3-r0)
(38/65) Installing libblkid (2.39.3-r0)
(39/65) Installing libmount (2.39.3-r0)
(40/65) Installing pcre2 (10.42-r2)
(41/65) Installing glib (2.78.4-r0)
(42/65) Installing libhwy (1.0.7-r0)
(43/65) Installing libimagequant (4.2.2-r0)
(44/65) Installing libjpeg-turbo (3.0.1-r0)
(45/65) Installing lcms2 (2.15-r4)
(46/65) Installing openjpeg (2.5.0-r3)
(47/65) Installing libxft (2.3.8-r2)
(48/65) Installing fribidi (1.0.13-r0)
(49/65) Installing graphite2 (1.3.14-r6)
(50/65) Installing harfbuzz (8.3.0-r0)
(51/65) Installing pango (1.51.0-r0)
(52/65) Installing cairo-gobject (1.18.0-r0)
(53/65) Installing pkgconf (2.1.0-r0)
(54/65) Installing libxml2 (2.11.7-r0)
(55/65) Installing shared-mime-info (2.4-r0)
(56/65) Installing libsharpyuv (1.3.2-r0)
(57/65) Installing libwebp (1.3.2-r0)
(58/65) Installing zstd-libs (1.5.5-r8)
(59/65) Installing tiff (4.6.0-r0)
(60/65) Installing gdk-pixbuf (2.42.10-r6)
(61/65) Installing librsvg (2.57.1-r0)
(62/65) Installing libspng (0.7.4-r0)
(63/65) Installing libwebpdemux (1.3.2-r0)
(64/65) Installing libwebpmux (1.3.2-r0)
(65/65) Installing vips (8.15.0-r0)
Executing busybox-1.36.1-r15.trigger
Executing glib-2.78.4-r0.trigger
Executing shared-mime-info-2.4-r0.trigger
Executing gdk-pixbuf-2.42.10-r6.trigger
OK: 112 MiB in 94 packages

[jcupitt]

Hi @FluffyDiscord, you'd need to ask on an alpine forum, but that does seem like a lot.

Debian stable for example looks like this:

$ docker pull debian:12
...
$ docker run -it --rm debian:12
root@af1ca726ca6b:/# apt update && apt upgrade
...
root@af1ca726ca6b:/# apt install libvips42 --no-install-recommends
...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  fontconfig fontconfig-config fonts-dejavu-core imagemagick-6-common libaec0
  libaom3 libbrotli1 libbsd0 libcairo-gobject2 libcairo2 libcfitsio10 libcgif0
  libcurl3-gnutls libcurl4 libdatrie1 libdav1d6 libde265-0 libdeflate0
  libexif12 libexpat1 libfftw3-double3 libfontconfig1 libfreetype6 libfribidi0
  libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-common libglib2.0-0 libgomp1
  libgraphite2-3 libgsf-1-114 libgsf-1-common libgssapi-krb5-2 libharfbuzz0b
  libhdf5-103-1 libheif1 libhwy1 libicu72 libimagequant0 libimath-3-1-29
  libjbig0 libjpeg62-turbo libjxl0.7 libk5crypto3 libkeyutils1 libkrb5-3
  libkrb5support0 liblcms2-2 libldap-2.5-0 liblerc4 liblqr-1-0 libltdl7
  libmagickcore-6.q16-6 libmatio11 libnghttp2-14 libnspr4 libnss3 libnuma1
  libopenexr-3-1-30 libopenjp2-7 libopenslide0 liborc-0.4-0 libpango-1.0-0
  libpangocairo-1.0-0 libpangoft2-1.0-0 libpixman-1-0 libpng16-16
  libpoppler-glib8 libpoppler126 libpsl5 librsvg2-2 librtmp1 libsasl2-2
  libsasl2-modules-db libsqlite3-0 libssh2-1 libssl3 libsz2 libthai-data
  libthai0 libtiff6 libvips42 libwebp7 libwebpdemux2 libwebpmux3 libx11-6
  libx11-data libx265-199 libxau6 libxcb-render0 libxcb-shm0 libxcb1 libxdmcp6
  libxext6 libxml2 libxrender1 shared-mime-info
0 upgraded, 96 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 47.7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 169 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 

So 50mb download, 170mb on disc.

[jcupitt]

Is the 112mb for apk the download size or the on-disc size?

The windows binaries are about a 22mb download:

https://github.com/libvips/build-win64-mxe/releases/tag/v8.15.2

But of course they've been very carefully hand-tuned and don't include things like font rendering (relying on platform libraries instead).

[FluffyDiscord]

112MB is the on-disc size. The main space hog is Python. Though even without it (if I deduce its space and the pycache it makes), it's still at least three times the Windows binary size.

[jcupitt]

Maybe apk is installing all the packages for libvips development? python might be there to run the test suite. You'd need to ask the package maintainer.

[jcupitt]

The 22mb for windows is the download size, the on-disc size is about 75mb.

[FluffyDiscord]

Will do, thank you