Re: Reducing the size of executables produced by GNAT

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

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"Hibou57" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> wrote in message
news:3ff060f5-673b-4011-a0d1-1692d6e6f105@e10g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
On 13 f�v, 22:27, Gautier <gaut...@fakeaddress.nil> wrote:
...
> * Consider using another Ada compiler than GNAT to that purpose.
The fact is that GNAT is a monopol in this area. There use to be
SmallAda, and �Ada, which were rahter Ada interpreters. Just look for
"Ada compiler", on any search engine, and you will always be bringed
to "GNAT", in one way in an other.

Surely there are other Ada compilers. In this space, Aonix's compilers might
work (but I think would be pricey).

Janus/Ada would be ideal for what you are trying to do (it was designed from
the ground up to minimize code size, since it was originally intended to run
on 640K MS-DOS machines - Hello World executable sizes are around 60K - and
programs that don't use Text_IO can be a lot smaller), but we have not yet
done a Linux version.

[It should be noted that a lot of the executable size of a (tiny) Windows
program is made up of linkage tables that don't actually contribute to the
(real) memory footprint of the program. A rough guess is that there is
around 12K of such stuff.]

[I'm always surprised at the size of Windows programs compared to their
MS-DOS counterparts. Hello World had a 12K executable size on 32-bit MS-DOS
using an extender - that's the same instructions, just different OS calls.
Of course, the extender added some size. The 16-bit MS-DOS executables could
be as small as 4K and no extender was needed.]

---

OTOH, I tend to argee that the best solution is to run a custom web server,
not CGI. The server that runs AdaIC.com is written in Ada, runs behind a
business DSL line on an ordinary 900 MHZ Windows desktop, and rarely bogs
down (occasionally for complex searches or when we're blasted with spam).
That server not only serves normal pages, but it also runs a search engine,
serves dynamic spotlights, and handles on-line surveys -- all with compiled
Ada code (nothing is written in another language and all is linked
together). [It's a relative of Tom's Smplsrvr, although it is quite a bit
more complex.]

                                     Randy.