Re: GNAT Executables: How low can you go?

["Theodore E. Dennison" <dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com>]

Norman H. Cohen wrote:
> 
> In article <317688E9.2781E494@escmail.orl.mmc.com>,
> "Theodore E. Dennison" <dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com> writes:
> 
> 1. That's a very narrow view of the world.  Don't forget about small,
>    portable PDA-like or tablet-based devices, with much more constrained
>    hard disk space.

Fair enough. I don't know how many OS/2 "PDA-like or tablet-based 
devices" there are out there, but they would have this concern.


> 2. What does robustness have to do with it?  We're not talking about
>    programmers cutting corners to save space, but about a compiler 
>    doing its job well.

That wasn't my impression. My impression (I think supported by the
thread title of "How low can you go?") was that we were talking about
space for space's sake.

> 3. You describe a typical end-user environment, in which executables
>    consume 3% of your disk space.  However, in a development environment,
>    there are projects that fill up disks with executables, requiring the

For a development system, you will obviously have to have a 
signifigantly larger amout of hard-drive space than your target 
platform. You'll need that just to support the compilers, gui builders,
bitmap editors, etc. I think the argument scales.

> This is nonsense.  Someone who comes to the table without any prejudices
> about Ada is sure to walk away with a negative impression if he sees
> executables an order of magnitude larger than those produced using C.

Typically, when I go looking for a utility for my OS/2 system on the
net, and I find two that preport to do the job (based on a comparison
of their README's, or whatever), I compare their sizes and download
the LARGER one. The reasoning here is that the larger one is very 
likely the more fully-featured and/or the more mature of the two. 

As to the "Hello World" issue: Anyone who TRULY had no prejudices
wouldn't give a s**t how small the compiler makes an program that
does nothing. This is the argumentative equivalent of a division by
zero. (Anyone with a good math background knows that I can prove 5=7
if you'll let me divide by 0). Their real concern will be how fast,
useful, and reliable the application is.

This is an issue created by anti-Ada folks because it is one of the
few points where they can point out an disadvantage to Ada (using most
compilers). You are never going to convince them Ada is ok by making
"Hello World" small. They will just change their argument (or more
likely, pretend its still large).

-- 
T.E.D.          
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