Why is the small binary size for edit so important to this project

[abulka]

Just wondering why having a small binary size for edit is so important to this project?

This topic was alluded to in #18 (comment) and perhaps can continue here as a discussion.

The small binary size, whilst a laudable goal, is not as important as functionality. At the moment the following features have been blocked:

• linux builds have no search (see Linux: This operation requires the ICU library #172)
• there is no syntax highlighting (see Add simple syntax highlighting #18)

all because it would make the size of the binary increase.

Personally as a programmer who relies on such fundamental features, I don't give a hoot about binary size. But I am excited for msedit to grow into a popular, effective and easy to use terminal text editor. Perhaps there can be a 'tiny' build and a normal build? Perhaps a plug-in system can be the solution, as then users can choose to download extra functionality and use more disk space.

[Kissaki]

Microsoft wants to integrate it into Windows itself, and keep the size impact of that minimal.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/edit-is-now-open-source/

Edit is a small, lightweight text editor. It is less than 250kB, which allows it to keep a small footprint in the Windows 11 image.

This unfortunately limited our choices to a list of editors that either had no first-party support for Windows or were too big to bundle them with every version of the OS. As a result, Edit was born.

In one of the issue comments they said they'd be fine with up to 500 kB, but no more.

---

micro is 11 MB. Helix is 22 MB.

I like that this project has a specific focus and stays true to it. There's value in a narrow scope.

If you're looking for more in a CLI text editor, why not use micro or Helix?