Re: Reducing the size of executables produced by GNAT

[Jacob Sparre Andersen <sparre@nbi.dk>]

Hibou57 <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> writes:

> For a long time ago I'm looking for a way to reduce th esize of Ada
> programs compiled with GNAT.

Are you sure it is an important goal for your task?

> With a simple Hello-World I cannot go below 45KB, which is very much
> for a so simple program.

I just created a 7_796 byte "Hello World" program.  Without any
special tricks.

I suspect that you are not really aware of what the Ada.Text_IO
library is supposed to do behind the scenes.  There is a fair bit of
accounting going on.

> I'm afraid of what it means : take long to initialize at startup ?

Have you tested if that is really the case?

> (I need fast application, for CGI on a Linux server),

If you really need a fast solution, why don't you create a stand-alone
HTTP server instead?

> Further more, as usualy, dynamic linking on Linux fall into many
> troubles,

The only one I've ever had, is that I have to recompile when I switch
to the next stable version of Debian.

> I need to compile it statically linked. And there, I got a simple
> Hello-World which weight 120KB!

I only get 110_236 bytes.

> Why is it so big ?

Because you link in the run-time.

> What can I do ? Are there some hidden magic compiler switch to
> reduce this size ?

None that I know of.

> What are the conscenquences of this size ? Does it execute all of
> this 120KB of code before starting the application main work ?

Most likely not.

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
�A corollary of Murphy's law is that duplicate information
 eventually becomes different information.  Putting both in
 the same file may slow down the process, but it will not
 prevent it.�                                 -- Wes Groleau