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faq: replace stale engine-size claim with real numbers#535

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eseidel merged 4 commits intomainfrom
es/faq-engine-size
Apr 24, 2026
Merged

faq: replace stale engine-size claim with real numbers#535
eseidel merged 4 commits intomainfrom
es/faq-engine-size

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@eseidel eseidel commented Apr 24, 2026

Summary

  • Closes fix: shorebird engine builds are larger than expected, fix and document size #19.
  • Replaces the "less than one megabyte" claim in the code-push FAQ with a concrete table of stripped engine sizes (on-disk and download, iOS arm64 and Android arm64-v8a) for Shorebird vs. stock Flutter on the current Flutter 3.41.7 engine.
  • Notes that earlier Shorebird engines were larger, without dwelling on specific historical numbers, so the answer ages reasonably as we continue to shrink the overhead.

Numbers

Measured via the compare_sizes tool, with gzip -9 as a proxy for the DEFLATE compression used by APK/IPA:

Platform Shorebird (on-disk / download) Flutter (on-disk / download) Overhead
iOS (arm64) 13.25 MB / 5.68 MB 8.58 MB / 3.67 MB +4.67 MB / +2.01 MB
Android (arm64-v8a) 13.38 MB / 6.40 MB 10.79 MB / 5.06 MB +2.58 MB / +1.35 MB

Shorebird engine 21934c19… / Flutter engine 59aa584f… (both Flutter 3.41.7, April 2026).

Month-over-month sanity check against the 3.41.5-rc0 Shorebird engine (87bc2083…, 2026-03-25): iOS dropped from 15.29 MB to 13.25 MB on-disk (~2 MB), Android stripped dropped from 14.59 MB to 13.38 MB (~1.2 MB). That's the basis for the "iOS overhead came down by roughly 2 MB in the preceding month" line.

Test plan

  • npm run build (astro check + build) passes locally
  • faq.mdx renders with the table formatted correctly on the live preview

eseidel added 3 commits April 24, 2026 08:46
Closes #19.

The existing "less than one megabyte" figure in the code-push FAQ never
matched reality — Shorebird ships its own Flutter engine build with the
patching runtime included, and the actual overhead is in the 1–5 MB range
depending on platform and whether you're measuring on-disk or download.

Replace the claim with a table of concrete stripped sizes (Shorebird vs.
stock Flutter, on-disk and download, iOS and Android) for the current
Flutter 3.41.7 engine, plus a note that earlier engines were larger so
the numbers get better over time.
@eseidel eseidel merged commit 9a7f962 into main Apr 24, 2026
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@eseidel eseidel deleted the es/faq-engine-size branch April 24, 2026 18:51
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fix: shorebird engine builds are larger than expected, fix and document size

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