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Le Chaud Lapin · Guest

I would like to know what techniques I can use to reduce the size of my
executable.

Suppose I start with a 556KB. I try various thinks and show the
resulting size after doing that one optimization independently of the
other. My platform is MS Windows, but I am looking for things that can
be done portable in the code without too many #define's.

I have tried the following:

1. Remove linking to standard library (as much as possible) (512KB) *
2. Add throw() to function prototypes - *unfortunately, VS2005 does
not yet support (556KB)
3. Get rid of all GUI elements and go to CUI-only (484KB) with command
loop
4. Set optimizer to favor small size over high speed (516KB)
5. Revisit all template code and make sure functions are not in-line
(not done yet)

Does #5 make help?

*I noticed in the linker symbol output file that there are many
elements from standard library that get linked in. I might have used a
few sprintf's here and there, and a few trigonometric functions, but
the rest...

***Because empty throw specifications [throw()] were not supported, I
forcibly turned off all exception handling using the compiler switches,
and though it cried the whole time while compiling, the resulting
executable was (492KB).

Finally, my goal was to get the smallest size by doing all of these at
once so that there as only the "engine" part of the program and a
skeletal main() having neither a GUI nor a real CUI. (372KB)

But printf, scanf, and math friends are still present, so I have two
questions:

1. Knowing that some global variables will be inevitably linked
because of the standard library, is it worth the trouble to get rid of
scanf and printf and perhaps a few of the math functions assuming there
will be no CUI?

2. What other portable techniques exist for trimming the fat from
EXE's. I have seen Matt Pietrek's article for Windows, but I need
methods that are source code centric and portable.

TIA,

-Le Chaud Lapin-

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Robert Mabee · Guest

Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

Dave Harris · Guest

jaibuduvin (AT) gmail (DOT) com (Le Chaud Lapin) wrote (abridged):