Stop deploying the static framework

[friedbunny]

In light of:

• Hundreds of megabytes of extra zipped size (and gigabytes, unzipped) after Set GCC_GENERATE_DEBUGGING_SYMBOLS in Xcode #12672.
• As yet unsolved Xcode 10 incompatibilities. (Static framework fails to build with Xcode 10b3 #12339)
• Uncertain use.
• Its untested/unmeasured nature.

... we should stop including the static framework in our release deployments. Interested developers will still be able to build it themselves.

/cc @mapbox/maps-ios

[1ec5]

This document will need to be updated to be even less optimistic about the static framework.

[1ec5]

Not sure if it’s a problem, but make ipackage still tries to merge in ICU from Mason even after #12808:

mapbox-gl-native/platform/ios/scripts/package.sh

Lines 105 to 109 in 06ff49d

	libtool -static -no_warning_for_no_symbols \
	-o ${OUTPUT}/static/${NAME}.framework/${NAME} \
	${LIBS[@]/#/${PRODUCTS}/${BUILDTYPE}-iphoneos/lib} \
	${LIBS[@]/#/${PRODUCTS}/${BUILDTYPE}-iphonesimulator/lib} \
	`cmake -LA -N ${DERIVED_DATA} | grep MASON_PACKAGE_icu_LIBRARIES | cut -d= -f2`

[js]

As a newcomer frustrated with the size of the Mapbox iOS framework this is very confusing. The first comment states:

[static framework adds] Hundreds of megabytes of extra zipped size (and gigabytes, unzipped) after #12672.

and the document linked above states

If you have installed our SDK via CocoaPods or Carthage, you are already using our dynamic framework.

Yet this is the size of the latest release

$ du -sh mapbox-ios-sdk-4.4.1-dynamic.zip 
112M	mapbox-ios-sdk-4.4.1-dynamic.zip

and unzipped:

$ du -sh dynamic/
338M	dynamic/

This will bloat the size of any repository it is added to, without an additional step to strip the 256M of dSYM debug symbol. Why are these distributed anyway? That's not exactly common practice…

Also, there's significant additional bloat between v4.3.0 and 4.4.1 (90MB vs 338MB!):

du -sh Pods/Mapbox-iOS-SDK/dynamic/*
1.5M	Pods/Mapbox-iOS-SDK/dynamic/38F3F1B0-BDAC-3C0D-9DEE-A201A7ACC800.bcsymbolmap
1.5M	Pods/Mapbox-iOS-SDK/dynamic/CB4E30A5-98B9-3FBA-AA44-CDBAF7583314.bcsymbolmap
 50M	Pods/Mapbox-iOS-SDK/dynamic/Mapbox.framework
 36M	Pods/Mapbox-iOS-SDK/dynamic/Mapbox.framework.dSYM

[friedbunny]

@js You are indeed solely downloading/using the dynamic framework (and so this particular issue isn’t strictly relevant, as it’s about the static framework).

The root cause of the extra size in all flavors of 4.4.x is #12672, which enabled the inclusion of extra debug symbols in Release builds — the static framework was significantly more affected by that change, but the dynamic framework also grew. For GitHub releases we upload a variety of zips, some of which include both static and dynamic frameworks; stopping deployment of the static framework to GitHub is the primary goal of this issue.

This will bloat the size of any repository it is added to, without an additional step to strip the 256M of dSYM debug symbol. Why are these distributed anyway? That's not exactly common practice…

I do tend to agree that shipping a dSYM is something we should reconsider, but stopping doing so would not make the dynamic framework smaller — it would become larger still, as all of the debug symbols (necessary for crash symbolication, breakpoints, etc.) would remain in the main binary (instead of most of them being stripped out into the dSYM).

Though inconvenient, there are ways to work around size limits in git(hub) repositories. In particular, removing bitcode can significantly reduce size (if that’s something you can live without).

[friedbunny]

Working on addressing regular dynamic framework size issues in #12947.

[1ec5]

As yet unsolved Xcode 10 incompatibilities. (#12339)

For what it’s worth, #12971 fixes the Xcode 10 incompatibility.