Discussion: reducing the install footprint #115
Description
An npm install of node-red-nodegen results in 265Mb of node_modules. If you npm install the repository (so devDependencies are included) it's over 650Mb.
I would like to see if we can reduce this overhead. This issue is a summary of what is using the space - and to explore what we can do about it.
Here are the current dependencies and how much they contribute to node_modules:
| Size | Module |
|---|---|
| 40 | js-string-escape |
| 128 | csv-string |
| 184 | colors |
| 192 | minimist |
| 320 | mustache |
| 1040 | axios |
| 2720 | yamljs |
| 3736 | ajv |
| 31008 | swagger-js-codegen-formdata |
| 51464 | javascript-obfuscator |
| 76464 | jimp |
| 200344 | api-spec-converter |
| 405144 | cldr |
The main offender is cldr (198Mb) - which is used by the WoT node to determine the text direction of some part of text. I don't know enough about the WoT code to know how important this is and whether it can be changed to be a command-line argument the user provides instead of it being determined by inspecting the codepages of the content.
api-spec-converter (98Mb) is used by the Swagger node to handle the different versions of the OpenAPI spec. swagger-js-codegen-formdata (15Mb) is the core functionality for the Swagger generator - can't avoid that.
jimp (37Mb) is used by all nodes to check the size of the icon, and to resize it if needed. Personally, I think we can do without this code and just use the image provided. If we keep it, it needs to be updated to reflect we support svg, font-awesome and the images can be any size as long as they have a 1:2 ratio.
javascript-obfuscator (25Mb) is a lot of code for functionality I don't really care for. Obfuscation doesn't provide any real security and is easily undone.
Another option to consider is making them separate nodegen tools - rather than all bundled into the one. That'll minimise the overhead for users who are only interested in one or other of the modes.