Shrinking closure example

Sometimes I check nixpkgs packages I use for unexpected development-only runtime dependencies. I do it mostly to shrink download sizes for things I update frequently.

I developed a few hacks to find things quickly. The primary hack is to grep dependency graph of an executable-only package (say, a game) for -dev packages in it’s runtime closure. Here is an example for fheroes2 package:

$ nix-store -q --graph $(nix-build -A fheroes2) | grep -P -- '-dev.*->' | grep -vP -- '->.*-dev'
"4bdanp07rax5mazgjzgdwx61sf6p01qc-SDL2-2.0.22-dev" -> "nj09vl0pzc41sn4wh7q2vlppmkv3dhiy-SDL2_mixer-2.0.4" [color = "burlywood"];
...

Here we see that SDL2.dev package is pulled into SDL2_mixer.out runtime closure. It’s a bug.

More interesting hack is to grep full runtime closure for files that are cleary development-only: C ehader files, pkg-config files and so on. Here is a grep example again for fheroes2:

$ find $(nix path-info -r $(nix-build -A fheroes2)) | grep -P [.]h$ | shuf | unnix | nl | tail -n 2
  1301  /<<NIX>>/libnfnetlink-1.0.2/include/libnfnetlink/libnfnetlink.h
  1302  /<<NIX>>/xorgproto-2021.5/include/X11/extensions/dpmsproto.h

Here we see that xorgproto (header-only package) and libnfnetlink (package without a separate .dev output) pull in development headers into our previous game. Both are probably unintended and worth a fix.

To get rid of the dependencies I usually add dev outputs to libraries without dev output like a recent libfido2 example:

--- a/pkgs/development/libraries/libfido2/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/development/libraries/libfido2/default.nix
@@ -29,6 +29,8 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation rec {

   propagatedBuildInputs = [ openssl ];

+  outputs = [ "out" "dev" "man" ];
+
   cmakeFlags = [
     "-DUDEV_RULES_DIR=${placeholder "out"}/etc/udev/rules.d"
     "-DCMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR=lib"

Sometime I have to explicitly change the package to not retain build-only dependencies. Here is a recent freedroidrpg example:

Do not embed paths to build-only depends (-I...SDL2-dev and friends)
into savefile lua comments.
--- a/src/savestruct_internal.c
+++ b/src/savestruct_internal.c
@@ -486,8 +486,8 @@ void save_game_data(struct auto_string *strout)
        autostr_append(strout,
                "SAVEGAME: %s %s %s;sizeof(tux_t)=%d;sizeof(enemy)=%d;sizeof(bullet)=%d;MAXBULLETS=%d\n",
                SAVEGAME_VERSION, SAVEGAME_REVISION, VERSION, (int)sizeof(tux_t), (int)sizeof(enemy), (int)sizeof(bullet), (int)MAXBULLETS);
-       autostr_append(strout, "BUILD_CFLAGS: %s\n", BUILD_CFLAGS);
-       autostr_append(strout, "BUILD_LDFLAGS: %s\n", BUILD_LDFLAGS);
+       autostr_append(strout, "BUILD_CFLAGS: %s\n", "<hidden>");
+       autostr_append(strout, "BUILD_LDFLAGS: %s\n", "<hidden>");
        autostr_append(strout, "VERSION: %s\n", freedroid_version);
        autostr_append(strout, "--]]\n");

Sometimes you might also need to add propagatedBuildInputs = ... to make headers-only dev output self-contained.

Is it worth the hassle? If feels like development headers don’t take that much space anyway. It’s true that some packages have tiny overhead. But things add up quickly. For example freedroidrpg PR shrinks runtime closure from 808MB down to 450MB (44% reduction). While fheroes2 RPs shrunk runtime closure from 622MB down to 557MB (11% reduction).

These are just two examples I found in 5 minutes. There are many more packages you can fix in nixpkgs! Give it a try!

Have fun!