From: "Don Berkley" <berk002 AT ibm DOT net>
Subject: Re: How Come the Executable Files are SO Large?
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
References: <01bc51ee$55eb94e0$030101c0 AT ibm DOT ibm DOT net> <33608B9F DOT 5D56 AT SPAMcs DOT com>
Message-ID: <01bc527f$e8144ce0$030101c0@ibm.ibm.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 166.72.137.109
Date: 26 Apr 97 20:24:59 GMT
Lines: 60
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp
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I am sorry that I did not look in the FAQ first.  I was/am in 
a hurry because I am completing a compiler that I am 
writing for a college course.  It is a very small compiler
and must run stand alone.  So, I packaged my compiler
with pmodstub.exe and tried to run it on a second DOS
machine that does not have DJGPP installed on it.  I 
received a message stating that the program was too 
large for memory and I have 8MB on this machine!
I was surprised by this and began looking at the .exe
file sizes (at that time).  I did not think to look in the
FAQ because the .exe file was twice as big as the
.exe file compiled under a MSWin C-compiler.  I can
not hand in a project that requires more than 8MB, so
I'll have to hand in the MSWin copy of the .exe file.
I did compare the size of the DJGPP .exe file that
runs without pmodstub.exe and there is not much
difference in size.  Oh well, back to MSWin:>( 
Don Berkley
John M. Aldrich <fighteerNO AT SPAMcs DOT com> wrote in article
<33608B9F DOT 5D56 AT SPAMcs DOT com>...
> Don Berkley wrote:
> > 
> > Hello, I was very excited to learn about DJGPP and
> > installed it on one of my DOS machines.  However,
> > the executable (.exe) files produced by the compiler
> > are roughly twice the size I expect them to be.  Am
> > I doing something wrong or why are they so big?
> > Thanks for any enlightenment!
> 
> This is one of the most frequently asked DJGPP questions.  Why do I say
> this?  The Frequently Asked Questions list (v2/faq210b.zip) gives a
> detailed explanation of executable size and what you can do about it in
> chapter 8.15.
> 
> Briefly, the vast majority of that extra space is used by the djgpp
> startup code, which handles switching into protected mode, setting up
> exception handling and long filename support, parsing the command line
> arguments, reading the system environment and 'djgpp.env', and more. 
> There are ways to disable some of this; see the aforementioned section
> of the FAQ.
> 
> The thing to remember about the startup code is that it is a fixed
> size:  the larger the program, the less proportional part of it will be
> taken up by the startup code.  In fact, for large programs, DJGPP
> usually produces code that's smaller and faster than code from any
> commercial DOS compiler.  With small programs, the time it takes to
> perform the startup operations completely obscures the time it takes to
> actually run your code.  It's a bit silly to do all of that work just to
> print "Hello, world." on the screen.  ;)
> 
> -- 
> John M. Aldrich, aka Fighteer I <fighteer AT cs DOT com>
> 
> -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
> Version: 3.1
> GCS d- s+:- a-->? c++>$ U@>++$ p>+ L>++ E>++ W++ N++ o+>++ K? w(---)
> O- M-- V? PS+ PE Y+ PGP- t+(-) 5- X- R+(++) tv+() b+++ DI++ D++ G>++
> e(*)>++++ h!() !r !y+()
> ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
>