full-icu makes binaries huge

cc: @leerob @robertsLando

node-v12.22.1-linux-x64 (--with-intl=small-icu) 36.5 MB

node-v14.16.1-linux-x64 (--with-intl=full-icu) 61.3 MB

full-icu is the new default. However, is it worth it?

Is there anything we can do to decrease binary size?

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Semver implications:

--without-intl -> --with-intl=small-icu -> --with-intl=full-icu

is minor change. The reverse is breaking change. I think maybe we can use --without-intl first, and see how things go.

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For reference:

--without-intl:
28M     node-v14.16.1-linux-x64

--with-intl=full-icu: (default)
62M     node-v14.16.1-linux-x64
34M     node-v14.16.1-linux-x64.lz4
25M     node-v14.16.1-linux-x64.zip
25M     node-v14.16.1-linux-x64.tar.gz
17M     node-v14.16.1-linux-x64.tar.xz

Related: nodejs/node#19214, vercel/pkg#50, vercel/pkg#184, vercel/pkg#228, vercel/pkg#281, vercel/pkg#578, vercel/pkg#885, vercel/pkg#1115

[pmb0]

@jesec

Please provide a command line option to pkg or an environment variable to control whether small-icu or full-icu is used. We use pkg to build different kinds of services. For some of them it is important to be able to format dates correctly in a certain language; for others not.

Suggestion:

pkg --with-intl=small-icu (default)
pkg --with-intl=full-icu

[jesec]

Interestingly, by the same reason I mentioned (C++ land), NODE_ICU_DATA will not work currently, but there is only one issue about that (vercel/pkg#539), with very limited comments. Perhaps most of our users don’t really care.

Let’s do small-icu (#167) for now and see how things so.