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Re: Reducing exe size?



In article 
<Pine.GSO.4.21.0112131119470.3709-100000@godzilla.ce.chalmers.se>, 
Robert Feldt <feldt@ce.chalmers.se> wrote:

> Hi again,
> 
> Is there some way to decrease the size of exe's produced by d2c?
> 
> When compiling the hi program created by "make-dylan-app hi" it starts out
> at 2102496 bytes. By stripping it I can get down to 1371136 and by packing
> with UPX I get down to 320000 which is much better but still a bit steep
> for a hello world.

Yeah it sucks and we'd like it to be smaller.

I've got a hazy long term plan to address it.  Basically, you'd need an 
option to defer all C code generation until the main program is 
compiled, and then emit the C lazily so that each function and global 
data structure is generated only if something else needs it.  A lot of 
work, and it's not really clear how much would *actually* be saved.

Hmm.  Andreas Bogk just checked in a new d2c mode that allows you to 
compile a bare Dylan file into a single C file.  It might be possible to 
(semi?) manually go through one of those and find out what is and isn't 
needed as a test case.  Well, maybe a Perl script or something :-)

But in any case a MB or two overhead isn't that big a deal today.  It's 
what ... a third of a cent of disk, and 10 cents of RAM?  Something like 
that, and getting less each month.

I hate bloat, but it's getting harder and harder to get excited about 
it.  Certainly I care about speed and features far more.

-- Bruce



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