Re: Ada interacting with Windows 8.1+ GUI

[gautier_niouzes@hotmail.com]

Am Freitag, 26. Oktober 2018 11:19:24 UTC+2 schrieb Simon Wright:

> You can compile with -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections which say each
> subprogram/data object resp. is to have its own section. If your linker
> supports (the equivalent of) -gc-sections. linking with it means that
> only the used sections get linked. This is fine for (arm-eabi) embedded
> systems & (probably) Linux. which use GNU ld, but not on macOS. Can't
> say for Windows.

It does something visible in terms of executable size.

> GNAT provides gnatelim, which analyses your code and (?) regenerates it
> without the unused objects. No idea how well this works.

gnatelim produces a file with a list of pragmata like:
pragma Eliminate (Zip, Traverse, Source_Location => "zip.adb:514");

On the next build GNAT will see the subprogram's code as blank lines.
gnatelim reduces further the executable size (on Windows; which means that -gc-sections is not fully efficient). The downside is that the list is quickly outdated, you need to rebuild it often.