Alpine v3.6 is 37 MB, v3.7 is 40 MB, v3.8 is 224 MB, why so large?

[gavenkoa]

It is not clear what is the cause of significant increase in Alpine v3.8 base box size:

bash# stat --format '%s %n' maier-VAGRANTSLASH-alpine-3.*/*/virtualbox/*.vmdk
 38766592 maier-VAGRANTSLASH-alpine-3.6-x86_64/1.0.0/virtualbox/packer-virtualbox-iso-1495719600-disk001.vmdk
 42006528 maier-VAGRANTSLASH-alpine-3.7-x86_64/3.7.0/virtualbox/packer-virtualbox-iso-1538596121-disk001.vmdk
235144192 maier-VAGRANTSLASH-alpine-3.8-x86_64/3.8.1/virtualbox/packer-virtualbox-iso-1542640845-disk001.vmdk

[gavenkoa]

I see the difference in Packer .json files:

bash# curl --HEAD http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.7/releases/x86_64/alpine-virt-3.7.0-x86_64.iso
...
Content-Length: 38797312
...
bash# curl --HEAD http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.8/releases/x86_64/alpine-standard-3.8.1-x86_64.iso
...
Content-Length: 109051904
...

There is virt image for v3.8:

bash# curl --HEAD http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.8/releases/x86_64/alpine-virt-3.8.1-x86_64.iso
...
Content-Length: 33554432
...

Doesn't that reduces base image size?