Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 13:19:13 +0300 (IDT)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: "Anthony Q. Bachler, BAS" <cwhizard AT sockets DOT net>
cc: gecko <gecko AT shell1 DOT tiac DOT net>, djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Why is compiled a lot bigger than src?
In-Reply-To: <199703242136.PAA05837@mail.sockets.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970325131849.3988F-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Mon, 24 Mar 1997, Anthony Q. Bachler, BAS wrote:

> DJGPP is far from perfect as I too have found out. 
> Remember, Turbo C (whence I too emigrated) is a commercial product.  People
> got paid to do nothing but sit around and work on it all day to make it
> better.  DJGPP is a free product.  People work on it in their spare time. 
> In the long run DJGPP will be a better product because of this, but until
> then it still needs lots of work.

I think that the above is highly exaggerated.  For real-world (as
opposed to toy) programs, DJGPP produces executables which are not
much larger than TC++ (if you use the right compiler switches, like
-s).  The difference is mainly because some functions in the DJGPP
library have *very* enhanced functionality when compared to TC.
Notable examples are `stat' and `system'.  The stuff needed to get
into protected mode is relatively small (2KB) and won't be seen in any
non-trivial program.

While any compiler needs work to make it better, my experience shows
that DJGPP definitely doesn't need more work than TC; in fact, I could
make the case for the opposite, if I cared enough (which I don't).