The problem is that PackageCompiler is not really a compiler: it seems like it just dumps the code that is JAOT compiled in memory to a shared object, which means any core Julia runtime functions/variables that get executed/declared along the way. Hence why it takes 5-10 min to compile even simple Julia scripts, and the final system image is >100MB (which includes debugging symbols, and that’s without the extra artifacts and libraries that get generated/copied). This in my opinion is absolutely unacceptable for embedded. (that, and the garbage collector)
In my honest opinion, I think it is a complete waste of time trying to get Julia to work on embedded, and the points discussed by Karpinski are moot at best in this domain (I already discuss the “safe” part in another topic: Julia for real time, worried about the garbage collector - #41 by 0xD3ADBEEF). Yes, it has a nice philosophy, but it needs a lot of infrastructure to carry it in the embedded space (a proper AOT compiler toolchain, drivers, HAL, etc…)
I would rather focus my efforts on making a good code generation package.