How is the qmk_toolbox.exe 154MB?

[Sainan]

I thought it might be the resources, but those add up to only like 7MB.

[tzarc]

.NET Framework.

[Sainan]

Doesn't .NET usually get redistributed/is already installed? I guess you wanted the EXE to be self-contained? That's a bit rough, tho.

[fauxpark]

Publishing as self-contained appears to be the only way for dotnet to generate a single .exe file, otherwise it also requires a .dll next to it. This would be fine if you're installing via the installer, but makes the "standalone" option less...standalone.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/

Well, I just tried it again and I was looking at the wrong thing, apparently. With --self-contained false the .exe under publish/ is only about 15MB. However I'm not sure this will work without .NET 6 installed. Currently setting up a 15H2 VM to test it out.

[fauxpark]

Yep, it does not work:

[Sainan]

It might be a fair assumption to make that a user does have .NET installed, tho. At least I have some .NET 4.5 apps that "just work" and they're <100KB.

[tzarc]

.NET Framework 4.x is a completely different beast to .NET 5.x and above.

[Sainan]

In a good way or in a bad way? Because from a developer POV, it seemed like a significant downgrade in terms of development experience, hence sticking with the much more usable .NET 4 series.

[fauxpark]

.NET Framework was/is installed on Windows by default: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/migration-guide/versions-and-dependencies

This is not the case starting with .NET 5. You must either install it yourself or have it bundled with the application.

[Sainan]

Yet another reason to use the .NET 4 series? I admit, I'm not sure how feasable a "downgrade" would be, but might be worthwhile. 154MB is really chunky for an executable, especially one that has to be downloaded.

For reference, Google Chrome's chrome.dll is 211MB.

[tzarc]

We see no reason to go backwards and won't be entertaining such a request.

[Sainan]

Just because the version number is lower, doesn't mean you'd be going backwards.

[fauxpark]

That's kind of how version numbers work though...

For one thing, we'd lose out on a bunch of newer language features and various other things. You can see all the changes from the upgrade to .NET 6 here: #421

Also of note is that the Toolbox still uses Winforms, and that appears to be what's taking up a good amount of the filesize. Switching to probably anything else might help here, but I haven't had time to look into it.

[Sainan]

With Microsoft, that is how version numbers work. No one using Windows 11 would decline an upgrade to Windows 10. No one writing C++ would purposefully use newer versions of Visual Studio lest they want "surprise crashes" for certain users. And I personally would not accept a downgrade from .NET 4 to .NET 5.

[tzarc]

You're more than welcome to fork toolbox and maintain your own.
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