Re: GNAT Executables: How low can you go?

[boschg@cs.utwente.nl (Geert Bosch)]

Robert Dewar (dewar@cs.nyu.edu) wrote:
: I of course like to see positive posts about GNAT like this, but surely
: that figure of 11,616 is wrong, I could believe 116K, but 12K must
: be wrong, especially if you are using statically linked libraries.
: Text_IO alone is larger than this.

But I didn't say I linked the runtime libraries static ;-) All the
application code, the regexp library  and the necessary headers/stub
fits in 12K. The smallest I could get with statical linking was 52 kB.

But since most C apps use emx.dll and emxlibc.dll, why couldn't Ada
apps not use a dll? I put *all* of the GNARL code (700 kB of .o files)
in one 250 kB dll and link all apps against that. This is a really good
way of avoiding those bloated executables we see otherwise. 

: Can you double check your numbers?

Yes, I did so before posting my previous article. You should also note
that the dynamically linked GNAT Runtime Libraries (GNATLIB.DLL) and
my own apps have been compressed using LXLite. The compressed GNAT1.EXE
(about half the size of the original GNAT1.EXE) seems to load even faster
when not using EMXLoad. When EMXLoad is used the times don't differ.

Of course I also used LINK386 instead of ld, since it seams to produce
much smaller executables. 

Still, even considered all tricks, 12 kB for the application code 
including all regexp code and the necessary .EXE headers is very
little, I think. 

Regards,
   Geert


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