[DISCUSSION] Reduce the DataFusion WASM size

[alamb]

Is your feature request related to a problem or challenge?

I have heard annecedotally a few times from different people that the size of the compiled WASM file for DataFusion is large (10MB?). This large size slows down page load times for webpages that use the DataFusion WASM.

I have heard this concern from @emilk @timsaucer @XiangpengHao at least Maybe @jonmmease or @waynexia too (but I can't remember for sure)

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like some way to reduce the size of the final WASM package (perhaps optionally)

Describe alternatives you've considered

Today when you build DataFusion it comes with many features (like support for all compression libraries for Parquet and functions specialized for multiple different types of Arrow arrays -- StringArray, and LargeStringArray and StringViewArray for example

One thing we could consider is feature flagging out many of the extra copies of code for different data formats somehow.

I think the challenge will be managing the complexity that this adds to build/ runtime.

Additional context

• Epic WASM: [EPIC] A collection of tickets for improved WASM support in DataFusion #13815

[alamb]

Maybe one place to start is with profiling / disassembling the wasm and see if we can get a breakdown of what is taking up what space 🤔

I think @logan-keede may also be interested in this

[emilk]

Thanks for creating this issue!

This is a useful tool for exploring .wasm bloat: https://github.com/AlexEne/binary_size_explorer
Use it on a "RelWithDebinfo"-.wasm blob.

[logan-keede]

I think @logan-keede may also be interested in this

I would love to, but I have found myself busier than I expected this summer. 🫤

[alamb]

I think @logan-keede may also be interested in this

I would love to, but I have found myself busier than I expected this summer. 🫤

totally understand -- I figured it was worth a shot. Thank you for your help in the past

[timsaucer]

One of the things I tried doing during investigation was to reduce the number of dependencies we pulled in. I wanted to create a sql feature flag that would prevent us from pulling in things like sqlparser for our build that didn't require SQL support at all. I found that it did significantly improve build times but it did not improve our final artifact significantly after optimization and stripping.