Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 14:23:09 -0800 (PST)
Message-Id: <199803292223.OAA18948@adit.ap.net>
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To: "Nils Emil P. Larsen" <Peter_Larsen AT vip DOT cybercity DOT dk>, djgpp AT delorie DOT com
From: Nate Eldredge <eldredge AT ap DOT net>
Subject: Re: Can I split my EXE-file into a EXE-file and a OBJ-file?
Precedence: bulk

At 06:57  3/29/1998 +0200, Nils Emil P. Larsen wrote:
>>What bothers you about your EXE being large? I personally would *rather*
>>have one large executable than a multitude of smaller files.
>
>I don't know why, but I diden't like EXE-files larger than 50 KB and I have
>no technical reason for that....
>Do I need to change my code before DLX can split it? 

Yes. You'll have to explicitly make part of it into a dynamically-loadable
module, using DLX's tools (I don't know exactly how it works). Then your
main code will have to load that module with DLX routines. However, by the
time the main EXE includes startup code and the DLX loader, it may well be
over the magic 50K value anyway. :-)

You know about the DJP executable compressor, right? That helps quite a bit.

A much easier solution is to work on your mind instead of your code :-).
After all, even many real-mode DOS executables are larger than 50K (Turbo C,
for instance, is around 450K). And in Unix, large executables are the norm
(I think my Linux box has an Emacs executable of about 2M, and that's with
shared libraries!). The traditional DOS scheme of a small executable and
many overlay files or other loadable code is a relic of the days when 64K
was a lot of memory.

>Can I call that kind
>of splitting run-time linking?

Yes, that's what it's called.

Nate Eldredge
eldredge AT ap DOT net