ESP32-C3: Significant wireless library size increase between 5.2.1 and 5.2.2 (IDFGH-13157)

[rojer]

Answers checklist.

• [X] I have read the documentation ESP-IDF Programming Guide and the issue is not addressed there.
• [X] I have updated my IDF branch (master or release) to the latest version and checked that the issue is present there.
• [X] I have searched the issue tracker for a similar issue and not found a similar issue.

General issue report

Simply recompiling a ESP32-C3 project with IDF 5.2.2 instead of 5.2.1 results in a gain of 14 KB binary size. I am attaching a size diff report here (diff_esp32c3.txt) for the same app compiled for 5.2.2 with reference to 5.2.1 - and it shows flash gains all over the wireless stack, the largest being in something called vshci_task.o.

This is significant, because it pushes us over the flash envelope for some of our targets, effectively precluding us form updating IDF. A supposedly bugfix-only release (according to semantic versioning) results in significant gain in binary size. Is there any recourse for us? Is there something we can do to disable the new functionality (if there was any added)?

[rojer]

I should add that 5.2.2 provided significant and very welcome reduction in resulting binary size for ESP32 (which is why i'm verya eager to adopt it, actually). This makes C3 increase all the more surprising. ESP32 diff: diff_esp32.txt - this is very nice, can we have the same for C3? pretty please? :)