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Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 12:52:26 +0100
From: Manuel Collado <m DOT collado AT aaron DOT ls DOT fi DOT upm DOT es>
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Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Reducing size of executables in binary distributions
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Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 12:54:37 +0100
>>From: Manuel Collado <m DOT collado AT aaron DOT ls DOT fi DOT upm DOT es>
>>
>>Is there a recommended practice for reducing the size of executables in 
>>binary distributions of utilities compiled with DJGPP?
>>
>>I'm aware of 'strip', but it does a small size reduction, and seems not 
>>to be generally applied in DJGPP binary packages. There is also UPX, but 
>>i've never used it. And yes, I've read the FAQ, but what I'm asking here 
>>is not what can be done, but what the DJGPP porters usually do.
> 
> The *b.zip distributions should come with stripped binaries.  Your
> testing indicates that it is indeed so, at least for the Gawk
> distributions (see below).

That's exactly what I wanted to know.

> 
>>I've checked 'gawk' by rebuilding myself from sources. The sizes in 
>>bytes, for version 3.1.1, are:
>>
>>294.912  gawk.exe from gwk311b.zip
>>324.608  gawk.exe compiled from gwk311s.zip
>>
>>Applying 'strip' gives 292.864 and 322.560 bytes, respectively.
> 
> That's because the binary that is built by the default Make command is
> stripped (the linker is invoked with the -s switch).  To build a
> non-stripped version, say "make debug" (or some such, I don't remember
> exactly).

"make djgpp-debug". It gives me a 637,780 bytes gawk.exe file.

> 
>>Perhaps the difference in sizes is due to different compiler/library 
>>versions.
> 
> No, the difference is only 2KB and is due to different ways the binary
> was stripped and/or different Binutils version (`strip' is part of
> Binutils).  The 2K difference is due to alignment considerations (it's
> a long story).

I was speaking about the difference between the executable in the *s.zip 
file and the executable rebuilt from sources:

  324,608 - 294,912 = 29,696

> 
> I usually strip a binary like this:
> 
>    exe2coff gawk.exe
>    strip gawk
>    stubify gawk

Thanks for the hint. Now I understand why 'strip *.exe' sometimes 
further reduces the size of the already stripped executable by 2KB, but 
not always.

Thanks, again.
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