I understand the answer.

The reason that I ask is that many user applications, such as editors and 
other writing tools, are using Pandoc for writing printable or 
distribution-ready output documents. Some simply invoke the command through 
the system, yet others are including a copy of Pandoc in their 
distribution. The latter approach circumvents the uncertainty of dependence 
on a system installation, but at the cost of bloating distribution size. 
And yet, of the many capabilities of Pandoc, it is unlikely more than a 
select few are needed by any particular application of the above kind.

This observation leads me to wonder whether it is possible, at least in 
principle, to achieve a substantially smaller executable size that offers a 
specific selection of the full application's capabilities.

I understand that the current design would not make such a possibility 
immediately feasible.

Still, I think the question is useful to consider.

Because of library dependencies, and the question of which libraries may be 
unnecessary in specific cases, it very difficult for me, at the moment, to 
address quantitatively how much smaller the footprint might be for some 
particular case, if internal and external and components could be excluded 
that are not required by a given set of needs.

I do notice that the readers and writers collectively consume about 80% of 
the core application source code.



On Friday, May 1, 2020 at 11:51:20 AM UTC-4, John MacFarlane wrote:
>
>
> If you want just some of pandoc's features you'd have to do 
> surgery on the source code.  Not recommended unless you know 
> your way around with Haskell.  Of course the GPL permits 
> this kind of alteration, and distribution of the result, 
> provided the terms of the license are followed. 
>

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