Inkscape package contains very large (8MB) inkview binary file - please package it separately

[Mantas Kriaučiūnas]

Binary package hint: inkscape

The inkscape and inkview binaries are the largest on my Ubuntu 8.04 system:

$ ls -lk /usr/bin | sort -rn -k5 | head -n5
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8042 2008-04-07 21:42 inkscape
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8030 2008-04-07 21:42 inkview
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3685 2008-06-13 01:22 Xephyr
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3659 2008-03-08 04:45 gimp-2.4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2861 2008-05-26 11:11 gdbtui

Very large (8MB) inkview executable isn't needed for Inkscape - please package it separately or use one of the following ways:

I suspect that the inkscape and inkview binaries are > 90% identical. Would it be possible to eliminate one of them, and thereby save 8MB? Possible methods:

- Two links to the same executable which checks argv[0].
- An executable for inkscape and a script for inkview which calls inkscape with a view-only flag.
- Two small executables and a shared library.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

A pre-release of the upcoming Inkscape 0.47 is now available in Ubuntu
Karmic for testing. Because *so* much stuff has changed compared with
the version you reported your bug against, would you mind re-testing
this new version and see if this bug is now resolved?

Karmic Alpha CD ISO images are available at:

  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/

If you're not testing Karmic yet, there are .debs of this new Inkscape
for Jaunty, Hardy, and Intrepid here:

  https://launchpad.net/~inkscape.testers/+archive/ppa

You might find further bugs when testing this alpha release. If that is
the case, please file a NEW bug report here:

   https://edge.launchpad.net/inkscape/+filebug

Thanks ahead of time for your testing efforts, and enjoy the new Inkscape!

[Alex Valavanis (valavanisalex)]

Large inkview executable is still present in latest development release

$ ls -lk /usr/bin/ |sort -rn -k5|head
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10531 2009-09-05 04:52 inkscape
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10505 2009-09-05 04:52 inkview
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6178 2009-09-04 21:02 net.samba3
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5552 2009-06-18 10:23 audacity
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5503 2009-09-04 21:02 rpcclient
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5349 2009-09-04 21:02 smbcacls
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5301 2009-09-04 21:02 smbget
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5277 2009-09-04 21:02 smbclient
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5201 2009-09-04 21:02 smbpasswd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5201 2009-09-04 21:02 smbcquotas

$ apt-cache policy inkscape
inkscape:
  Installed: 0.47~pre1-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 0.47~pre1-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 0.47~pre1-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Mattia Rizzolo (mapreri)]

I don't think it makes much sense for us (packaging guys for Debian/Ubuntu) to remove inkview from the main package.

Instead I wonder whether inkscape could grow a libinkscape shared library so that much of the common things shared between inkscape and inkview don't get duplicated.

I'm therefore considering this bug an "upstream" bug (and tagging it as so in the Debian ticket).

[Mattia Rizzolo (mapreri)]

Actually, this already happened with 0.92 (at least, building with cmake);

now:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 65888 Jan 4 16:54 /usr/bin/inkscape
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22616 Jan 4 16:54 /usr/bin/inkview

+

l /usr/lib/inkscape -hl
total 27M
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3.1M Jan 4 16:54 lib2geom_LIB.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 532K Jan 4 16:54 libavoid_LIB.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 154K Jan 4 16:54 libcola_LIB.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 477K Jan 4 16:54 libcroco_LIB.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 280K Jan 4 16:54 libdepixelize_LIB.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21K Jan 4 16:54 libgc_LIB.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 370K Jan 4 16:54 libgdl_LIB.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20M Jan 4 16:54 libinkscape_base.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 677K Jan 4 16:54 liblivarot_LIB.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 662K Jan 4 16:54 libnrtype_LIB.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 819K Jan 4 16:54 libuemf_LIB.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 218K Jan 4 16:54 libutil_LIB.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 129K Jan 4 16:54 libvpsc_LIB.a

now, this is not really much an improvement over before, considering the total space is quite unchanged, but splitting inkview doesn't make much sense anymore, removing 23k won't solve anything.

I'm therefore closing this bug as wontfix for debian and ubuntu.