.dmanifest can be smaller size?

[d954mas]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe (REQUIRED):
I am looking in size for my new game. This is web game so size is matter.

I found that .dmanifest is 54kb in size(gzip)
Mb it can be smaller.

Is dmanifest need string with path to resources?
For what it used? To show error with path when resources can't be loaded?

I think in engine and resources you use hashes not strings?

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game0.dmanifest.txt

Describe the solution you'd like (REQUIRED):
if string is not needed it can be removed.

If it need for some cases, mb it can be replaced with "unknown"? With special flag in game.project, for example strip_dmanifest?

If you look in .dmanifest file you can see that about half of the file is string with path.
So mb it can save about 25kb for web game.

It is small value, but make game smaller and load,start faster

Describe alternatives you've considered (REQUIRED):

Additional context (OPTIONAL):
Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here.

[britzl]

The dmanifest file is documented here: https://github.com/defold/defold/blob/dev/engine/docs/ARCHIVE_FORMAT.md#the-manifest-file-dmanifest

[d954mas]

"The manifest file is mainly used for Live Update content on the platforms that support this feature. Each entry in the manifest may have a list of dependants, which is a list of url hashes. The dependants refer to which oother files are required to be loaded in order for the resource itself to be loaded"

This is struct for ArchiveEntry

defold/engine/resource/proto/resource/liveupdate_ddf.proto

Line 80 in 582fd1c

* An entry that is produced for each resource that is part of the manifest.

In struct i see
required string url = 2;

1)My question is this string url is necessary to be in build?

I tryed to remove strings but it change size of file so file can't be parsed.

But when i replaced part of some names to my values. "blender_location" to "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" the game is correctly load and worked.

2024-05-18.13-35-55.mp4

2)So for example. What happened if replace actual url with empty string?

[JCash]

As you say, there are probably many opportunities to slim down the .dmanifest nowadays.
As you suggested, the paths may not actually be needed for running, and as the liveupdate archive verification is now on the developer, we should also be able to remove the cryptographics hashes.

So two use cases, with two variants:

• No liveupdate
  • Development
  • Release
• Liveupdate
  • Development
  • Release

I think it may be useful to keep some strings in development mode, for debugging (e.g. profiling resources).

It's also useful to remember that for certain cases, we might need a dmanifest at all. Before liveupdate, we only used game.arci (the index). So there should definitely be avenues forward here.