Re: Looking for a smart linker for GNAT/DOS

[Gautier.DeMontmollin@maths.unine.ch (Gautier)]

Samuel Tardieu <sam@ada.eu.org>:
> Gautier> It could avoid the explosion of executables' sizes (47k for a
> Gautier> ``null'' programme, 97k for a ``hello world'',...)
> 
> Well, this has nothing to do with an "explosion", this is a rather
> fixed overhead (depending on the packages you need). Sure, if you only 
> write "null" or "hello world" programs, this overhead is significant,
> but as soon as you start working on real projects, then this becomes
> insignificant.

The skip from 47k to 97k with the usage of Text_IO is insignificant
for a real project because you will use the greatest part of Text_IO.
But, in a real project, you will (maybe) also use much bigger 
and specialized packages whom you use only 10% - e.g., a graphics package
with tons of gadgets, curves, bars (I'm making an improved clone
of Turbo Pascal's Graph, there the problem appears well...).
So, the difference between the full packages sizes and the used part of them
will *increase* with greater projects - this is why the <<explosion>> term
is appropriated.
I'm thinking about the LAPACK library in FORTRAN, too: in many real projects,
only a few from the thousends LAPACK routines are used.
A GNAT/DOS implementation of it would produce executables of >20 megas
(and certainly just wouldn't run on most machines),
although they should be of a few hundreds of K if linked by a good linker!

G.