Reducing WASM binary size: lessons from building a web terminal

We're building Warp, an intelligent terminal written in Rust, and are now making it available through the browser via WASM. The initial challenge was reducing the size of the WASM binary to make it more suitable for web use, where loading times are critical. By optimizing the compiler options, enabling link-time optimizations, and re-designing asset management, we were able to reduce the size of the executable from 21.4MB to 8MB. We achieved this by bundling assets directly into the binary on desktop platforms but using a framework for async assets that can be fetched from a URL on web builds. This approach improves the user experience and makes the application more snappy, with a significant reduction in binary size.

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