Re: Size of linked program increasing with new version of GNAT.

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

"Peter Chapin" <PChapin@vtc.vsc.edu> wrote in message 
news:alpine.CYG.2.11.1412251746260.2396@WIL414CHAPIN.vtc.vsc.edu...
> On Thu, 25 Dec 2014, Shark8 wrote:
>
>>>
>>>> -Os for small size.
>>>
>>> Tried this one also now. The 3.15p GNAT don't have it. The 2014 GNAT
>>> still produces a 195 KB executable.
>>>
>>
>> Did you use the "strip unused sections" [or something similar] option for 
>> the linker?
>
> The OP might also want to look into gnatelim to see if using it could help 
> eliminate unusued code.

I would guess this is the "problem". Janus/Ada does this automatically 
(indeed, the Windows version doesn't even work without using it). Janus/Ada 
also avoids any tasking overhead in programs that don't declare a task. But 
Janus/Ada was designed for small program sizes; that's rarely a concern 
today.

> One could argue that the size of the "Hello, World" program isn't all that 
> important. The overhead might be large but if most of that overheard is 
> actually used in a realistically sized program, well, it's not really 
> overhead in that case.

Right. We used to use that argument when people complained about the 8K 
"Hello World" for Ada compared to some much smaller size for some other 
language that was less safe.

But these days, I don't try to argue about it much. Trivia that isn't 
related to one's uses of Ada is irrelevant, and the sorts of engineers that 
gravitate to power tools like Ada (and thus are the real customers for Ada) 
know not to care too much about irrelevant things. The people that worry too 
much about such things tend not to stick with Ada anyway, so spending too 
much effort discussing that isn't worth it.

                                           Randy.