NW Executable File Size: make a lightweight standalone executable

[loretoparisi]

The executable file size for

v0.12.3: (Jul 31, 2015, based off of IO.js v1.2.0, Chromium 41.0.2272.76)

are

Windows nw.exe 61MB
Linux nw 74MB
MacOS nwjsFramework 74,1MB

This means, that making a simple app package without any other external resource, generates a package that is about 70MB up to 100MB for MacOS .app like:

macbookproloreto:Contents admin$ ls -l
total 16
drwxr-xr-x@ 7 admin  staff   238  4 Nov 18:39 Frameworks
-rw-r--r--@ 1 admin  staff  2779  4 Nov 21:18 Info.plist
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 admin  staff   102  4 Nov 18:43 MacOS
-rw-r--r--@ 1 admin  staff     8 29 Lug 14:45 PkgInfo
drwxr-xr-x@ 8 admin  staff   272  5 Nov 13:00 Resources
macbookproloreto:Contents admin$ du -h -d1
 89M    ./Frameworks
 12K    ./MacOS
176K    ./Resources
 89M    .
macbookproloreto:Contents admin$ 

where I just have

macbookproloreto:Resources admin$ cd app.nw/
macbookproloreto:app.nw admin$ pwd
/Developmemt/Web/NodeWebKit/my-apps/example-app.app/Contents/Resources/app.nw
macbookproloreto:app.nw admin$ ls -l
total 16
-rw-r--r--  1 admin  staff  1275  5 Nov 13:14 index.html
-rw-r--r--  1 admin  staff   447  4 Nov 21:53 package.json
macbookproloreto:app.nw admin$ 

Is there any way to compile Chromium in order to strip down unnecessary libraries, etc to shrink it, let's say a light build like 20-30MB for the NW standalone?

Thank you.

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[puzzud]

@loretoparisi, as far as I know, the newest development of NW JS (the v0.13 alphas) is geared at solving that problem by providing 3 different build types: SDK (one with debugger / Chromium developer tools), normal, and then one with native client support.

As far as I know, the SDK version is most like what is available in 0.12.3, which adds a bit of bloat.

My experience is that the resulting NW JS builds compress down fairly well though; where I'm seeing something like 80 MB down to about 30 MB.

[loretoparisi]

@puzzud Ok, so I'm going to try the 0.13 alpha5. I confirm that compressing the app it is downsized to about 30MB, but how do you managed that, I mean it's ok to distribute, and you did like a native installer that unzip everything?

[ColonelBundy]

Using nwbuilder I get a stable 49.1% compression, 77mb -> 38mb. I would also like to see a more distributel friendly version.

[ghostoy]

I tried with UPX which compresses nw13-alpha3 sdk for win32 from 66M to 23M. But a known issue is that UPX will strip off all the debug info from executables.

[loretoparisi]

@makkesk8 thank you, I think I will try this way, since I need first a binary that is a stripped down version of the current one. Then as soon as I get a smaller executable, the compressed package will be distributed with a mac installer (if on mac). I will post here my results.

[ColonelBundy]

@loretoparisi That result wasn't 100% accurate since I have a gulp script that builds it with nw-builder then to NSIS so total package with installer is 38 mb, Me saying this doesn't really matter since the installer is just +/- a mb or two. But you should see a similar result :)