# How can the weight of package dependencies be determined?
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-the-weight-of-package-dependencies-be-determined/132876
**Category:** General Usage
**Tags:** packages, dependencies
**Created:** [October 4, 2025, 3:35pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-the-weight-of-package-dependencies-be-determined/132876 "2025-10-04T15:35:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2025, 3:35pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-the-weight-of-package-dependencies-be-determined/132876/1 "2025-10-04T15:35:24Z")
I often hear people talking about ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ package dependencies.
How is this determined?
Is the weight of each package determined by its size within the folder: “_.julia/compiled/v1.11_” ?
> **For example:**
>
> ```julia-auto
> Makie 0.24.6 ... 659.1 MB
> Plots 1.41.1 ... 614.4 MB
> DataFrames 1.8.0 ... 426.3 MB
> CairoMakie 0.15.6 ... 420.2 MB
> GLMakie 0.13.6 ... 256.5 MB
> Unitful 1.25.0 ... 214.2 MB
> PrettyTables 3.0.10 ... 174.4 MB
> HTTP 1.10.17 ... 166.3 MB
> CSV 0.10.15 ... 164.0 MB
> Revise 3.9.0 ... 159.2 MB
> Gtk 1.3.1 ... 135.1 MB
> PythonCall 0.9.28 ... 133.1 MB
> FFTW 1.10.0 ... 126.5 MB
> StaticArrays 1.9.15 ... 111.2 MB
> Colors 0.13.1 ... 78.4 MB
> ColorSchemes 3.31.0 ... 62.2 MB
> Distributions 0.25.120 ... 51.2 MB
> HDF5 0.17.2 ... 41.5 MB
> GR 0.73.17 ... 39.6 MB
> ForwardDiff 1.2.1 ... 35.8 MB
> PythonPlot 1.0.6 ... 34.2 MB
> TensorCast 0.4.9 ... 34.0 MB
> StatsBase 0.34.6 ... 28.5 MB
> DSP 0.8.4 ... 28.3 MB
> PGFPlotsX 1.6.2 ... 24.5 MB
> TerminalPager 0.6.4 ... 20.6 MB
> JSON 0.21.4 ... 17.3 MB
> Interpolations 0.16.2 ... 16.4 MB
> PlotlyJS 0.18.17 ... 16.3 MB
> RecipesBase 1.3.4 ... 14.9 MB
> LazyArrays 2.6.3 ... 14.6 MB
> TimeZones 1.22.0 ... 13.7 MB
> Accessors 0.1.42 ... 11.9 MB
> Proj 1.9.0 ... 11.7 MB
> Impute 0.6.12 ... 9.3 MB
> CondaPkg 0.2.33 ... 9.3 MB
> BenchmarkTools 1.6.0 ... 8.7 MB
> Tables 1.12.1 ... 8.4 MB
> Crayons 4.1.1 ... 8.3 MB
> StatsFuns 1.5.0 ... 8.1 MB
> FillArrays 1.14.0 ... 7.0 MB
> NanoDates 1.0.3 ... 6.1 MB
> XLSX 0.10.4 ... 5.5 MB
> StructArrays 0.7.1 ... 5.2 MB
> StatsPlots 0.15.8 ... 4.9 MB
> Format 1.3.7 ... 4.6 MB
> KernelInterpolation 0.3.5 ... 4.5 MB
> InspectDR 0.4.6 ... 4.2 MB
> DataFramesMeta 0.7.1 ... 3.4 MB
> QuadGK 2.11.2 ... 3.3 MB
> BonitoBook 0.1.0 ... 2.8 MB
> Dierckx 0.5.4 ... 2.2 MB
> IterTools 1.10.0 ... 1.9 MB
> IntervalSets 0.7.11 ... 1.8 MB
> StringDistances 0.11.3 ... 1.7 MB
> Combinatorics 1.0.3 ... 1.6 MB
> ConvolutionInterpolations 0.1.4 ... 1.5 MB
> Parameters 0.12.3 ... 1.4 MB
> LazyStack 0.1.3 ... 1.1 MB
> SplitApplyCombine 1.2.3 ... 0.9 MB
> ConstructionBase 1.6.0 ... 0.9 MB
> OrdinaryDiffEq 6.102.1 ... 0.8 MB
> Measures 0.3.2 ... 0.7 MB
> ScatteredInterpolation 0.3.6 ... 0.7 MB
> FastRunningMedian 0.3.1 ... 0.7 MB
> ProgressLogging 0.1.5 ... 0.6 MB
> DataManipulation 0.1.21 ... 0.6 MB
> Glob 1.3.1 ... 0.5 MB
> LsqFit 0.15.1 ... 0.5 MB
> DateFormats 0.1.19 ... 0.5 MB
> FastChebInterp 1.2.0 ... 0.5 MB
> LaTeXStrings 1.4.0 ... 0.5 MB
> PrettyPrint 0.2.0 ... 0.4 MB
> Chain 1.0.0 ... 0.4 MB
> GridInterpolations 1.3.0 ... 0.2 MB
> AccessibleModels 0.1.8 ... 0.1 MB
>
> ```
---
### Author:  [@goerz](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/goerz)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2025, 4:35pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-the-weight-of-package-dependencies-be-determined/132876/2 "2025-10-04T16:35:02Z")
I’d determine the “weight” of a dependency mostly by how many transitive dependencies it introduces, and second, by how long the package’s precompilation takes. That’s probably somewhat correlated with its size in `.julia/compiled`, but that’ wouldn’t be my primary metric.
---
### Author:  [@jling](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jling)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2025, 5:11pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-the-weight-of-package-dependencies-be-determined/132876/3 "2025-10-04T17:11:10Z")
> [@goerz](#):
>
> by how long the package’s precompilation takes
and maybe the `import/using` time
---
### Author:  [@gdalle](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gdalle)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2025, 5:19pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-the-weight-of-package-dependencies-be-determined/132876/4 "2025-10-04T17:19:51Z")
The previous answers focus mostly on performance and TTFX but there are other aspects to bringing in more dependencies (direct or indirect), such as
- Vulnerability to package deprecation or lack of maintenance
- Maintenance burden when your dependencies release breaking updates
For instance, Ivet Galabova gave a talk at JuliaCon Local Paris where she explained that HiGHS (a state-of-the-art optimization solver) has no dependencies whatsoever, not even BLAS.
---
### Author:  [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2025, 5:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-the-weight-of-package-dependencies-be-determined/132876/5 "2025-10-04T17:45:50Z")
Add still the invalidations brought in by the dependencies. In my view there aren’t really _light weight_ dependencies. GMT.jl has currently only 2 direct .jl dependencies (`PrecompileTools` & `Tables`). All others are stdlibs or `_jll`. The `_jll` artifacts may also have their own issues with DLL dependencies but are _instantaneous_ to load and don’t compile to tens/hundreds MB cache files.
---
### Author:  [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2025, 8:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-the-weight-of-package-dependencies-be-determined/132876/6 "2025-10-05T20:13:04Z")
Thanks for the helpful comments.
I would have hoped there was an easy way to determine the “weight” of a dependency.
---
### Author:  [@gdalle](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gdalle)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2025, 8:43pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-the-weight-of-package-dependencies-be-determined/132876/7 "2025-10-05T20:43:27Z")
There are ways to measure the various metrics we talked about, the hard part is deciding which one(s) you care about and why
---
### Author:  [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2025, 9:28pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-the-weight-of-package-dependencies-be-determined/132876/8 "2025-10-05T21:28:16Z")
> [@gdalle](#):
>
> which one(s) you care about and why
For instance, consider the “using/import load time” metric for the dependencies in some user package.
The @time\_imports macro, as suggested in [this other post](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improving-loading-time-of-own-package/85778/2), appears to be a valuable resource. However, it outputs a substantial number of items from unknown origins. This can be overwhelming for beginners.
I was just thinking: would it be too much to ask for just one metric, like the body mass index?
---
### Author:  [@nsajko](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/nsajko)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2025, 9:54pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-the-weight-of-package-dependencies-be-determined/132876/9 "2025-10-05T21:54:08Z")
The in-development version of the Performance tips page in the Julia Manual has an [Execution latency, package loading and package precompiling time](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1.13-dev/manual/performance-tips/#Execution-latency,-package-loading-and-package-precompiling-time) section.