[swift-users] Swift Binary Size vs. Obj-C

[Austin Zheng]

Swift binaries are so massive currently because there's no ABI stability,
therefore the runtime and support libraries must be packaged with every
application. This should change in the future.

Best,
Austin

On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 3:43 PM, Seth Friedman via swift-users <
swift-users at swift.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've seen a ton of blog posts written about all of the cool and exciting
> things about Swift, but I haven't see anything really about the downsides
> (besides the occasional post about pain points with interoperability).
> What's of biggest concern to me when considering migrating my company's app
> from Objective-C to Swift is binary size. Swift binary size seems to be
> several times larger than Objective-C, and I'm curious what data there is
> in the community to support this suspicion.
>
> For some quick data points, I created a single view controller project in
> Obj-C and one in Swift, turned off bitcode to get a better idea of what the
> binary size on device would be, and archived them. I did this in Xcode 8
> Beta 1 using Swift 3 so that I'd make sure to get any binary size
> improvements in Swift 3.
>
> The Obj-C IPA file was 639 KB. The Swift IPA file was *23.6 MB*. I know
> that the Swift runtime libs are about 4.5 MB, but subtracting that, the
> Swift IPA file is still *30x bigger than the Obj-C equivalent*. Next, I
> tried adding a simple table view controller, a Person model with a first
> and last name, and a data source that puts the first and last names in the
> table view in an attempt to make a functioning app. However, the binary
> sizes were about the same (the Obj-C one actually decreased to 635 KB).
>
> When we're talking about binary sizes this small, it's not a big deal, but
> my company's app is currently 81 MB, about 35 MB of which is code, and the
> rest is assets. If the code part of the binary size increases by orders of
> magnitude like this, we'll go way over the 100 MB cellular limit that Apple
> has set. This is also a really bad experience for customers in emerging
> markets like China and India that have poor connections.
>
> Can anyone confirm or deny that Swift binary size is orders of magnitude
> larger than Objective-C? I'm looking for the specific increase we'll see to
> take to my management in order to make a justification for whether it's
> worth it for our customers.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Seth Friedman
>
>
>
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