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

[Saagar Jha]

Yep, I just took a simple app and opened up the ipa. 90% of it is the
“Frameworks” directory containing the Swift frameworks libSwiftCore.dylib,
libSwiftDarwin.dylib, etc.


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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-- 
-Saagar Jha
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