Binary size

[Wieku]

I'm migrating my code from https://github.com/inkyblackness/imgui-go (more specifically https://github.com/neclepsio/imgui-go I use as replacement) and was taken by surprise that release build (-s -w ldflags) of my program with cimgui-go now weights ~7.5MB more:

• no imgui used: 13.1MB
• inkyblackness imgui: 15.2MB (code using imgui is 6.2K LoC so impact is minimal)
• cimgui-go: 22.7MB (built with -tags "exclude_cimgui_glfw exclude_cimgui_sdli")

Debug build increased from 44.8MB to 61.8MB:

• goweightres-inky.txt
• goweight-cimgui.txt

All built with go 1.21.0, gcc/g++ 12.2.0-msvcrt-posix-seh via winlibs.

I don't think implot and immarkdown adds so much so something else is happening but cgo/c/c++ ecosystem is a dark magic to me to figure out what.

[gucio321]

@Wieku maybe its because we also use imnodes and imgui_markdown...
anyway, consider the following:

[cimgui-go (0) ]$ du -hs  lib/linux/x64/*
6.8M	lib/linux/x64/cimgui.a
4.0K	lib/linux/x64/dummy.go
472K	lib/linux/x64/libglfw3.a
5.2M	lib/linux/x64/libSDL2.a

idk when (in "code history") this issue was opened, maybe your code include sdl unnecessarily?

[Wieku]

@gucio321 I will test over the weekend with a new version, but at the time I was building it with -tags "exclude_cimgui_glfw exclude_cimgui_sdli"

My theory is that because it links statically to the ".a" library it's not stripping unused symbols? IIRC inklyblackness' one is building imgui during the package build.

[Wieku]

@gucio321 I've ported the app to v1.0.0. I've done a symbol export via DLL Export Viewer and all imgui symbols are exported:
exported-cimgui.txt

vs inky, which has only select functions exported:
exported-inky.txt

So not stripping theory kinda makes sense I think?

I see ~600KB reduction in release build, which in reality is a bit bigger considering fresh build has new code and uses go 1.23.

Just for funzies I've ran goweight on v1.0.0, and there's some reduction, but still the size seems kinda excessive:

[gucio321]

sound reasonable.
I'm a bit afraid to touch this C/C++ sructure in our project as it somehow works.
but this would be something we might want to do in a future.