Re: Reducing size of Ada's EXE files

[yow@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov]

The Meridian compiler for PC DOS systems has a link option (-g) that
will remove unused code.  The smallest program that I have been able to
produce using the Meridian Linker with the -g option is 5K. (The program
filled the screen with A's)  So it would seem that the Meridian compiler
has about 5K of overhead.  On a larger program (630K) the linker removes
about 100K of stuff.

The Major drawback of using the -g option is that it is SLOW.  Using it
adds about 2 to 3 minutes to a small link (1 to 2 packages) and about 45
minutes to a large link (over 100 packages).  (The system used was a 386
25Mhz with a 2 meg disk cache, and a 15 msec ESDI disk).

What I would like to see is the SHARING of generic code, not this macro
expansion that takes place in compilers.  I wrote my own dynamic generic
because the generic code was about 20K (object code size) and the
generic was used 50+ times on a PC (640K limit).  This would never work
with the marco expansion because the program would be over 1 meg just
for the generics!!! (:-()

					Bill Yow
					yow@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov

My opinions are my own.