OpenEuphoria

Original date:2017-06-26 09:16:45 Edited by: ghaberek Subject: Re: Optimizing size of executable

Note: I wrote this answer yesterday but apparently forgot to hit Post.

Euphoria includes a lot of runtime code into translated executables to implement the required memory management and dynamic object routines. This is going to add some bloat to the executable, but it's helpful and necessary bloat.

There are three ways to reduce the size of an executable:

• Use the GCC "optimize for size" option -Os (the default is -O2)
• Use the GNU strip utility to remove symbols (included with MinGW)
• Use the UPX packer to apply compression (download from UPX)

Here is the program I compiled for this test. I included std/io.e to add some complexity to the program.

-- demo.ex 
include std/io.e 
 
procedure main() 
    puts( STDOUT, "hello, world\n" ) 
end procedure 
 
main() 

Here is the command I ran to create a makefile, which I can then edit.

euc -build-dir build -makefile demo.ex 

You can compile the executable on Windows like this. On Linux, just specify make.

mingw32-make -j4 -C build -f demo.mak 

The line you need to change for -Os is at the top of the makefile:

CFLAGS =  -DEWINDOWS -fomit-frame-pointer -c -w -fsigned-char -Os -m32 -IC:/Euphoria -ffast-math 
                                                               ^^ 

Here are the sizes I got through combining all the options:

Your mileage may vary with larger executables.

-Greg