I've shifted from Visual Basic 4.0 to Delphi 2.0.  I find that
Delphi generates very large EXE files.  Even a minimal app with
with just a single unit generates sizes in the range of 190KB !!
The equivalent VB app filesize would be under 10K !  Is there
anyway I can cut down on the filesizes in Delphi 2.0 ??
TIA,
Kevin Arouza
kevaro...@poboxes.com

Kevin Arouza wrote in article <5dhv6r$...@lana.zippo.com>...

mike

kevin,

is the exe size really that big when you consider that every vb4 app
mandates that you ship vb4xxx.dll? (and every 16 bit vb4 app requires that
you also bundle the shared ms OLE2 files) ???

On the other hand, with >=1.6 gig hard drives being standard on most new
machines, what's a 190k ??? (<G>)

-Bart

Kevin Arouza wrote in article <5dhv6r$...@lana.zippo.com>...

Realize that even a simple Delphi program may contain LOTS of objects
that you don't use.  You can remove these objects, but its a real
pain.  If you want to play a little, try adding a lot more
functionality to the program, and you will notice that the size won't
grow NEARLY as fast.  Thats because it doesn't have to add many more
objects, because they are alread there.  It REALY shines on a very
large program with lots of forms.

BTW, that 10K VB5 program will also cost a 1.2meg DLL that you have to
ship with it.

On 9 Feb 1997 02:11:39 GMT, "Bart Davis" <bhda...@worldsahead.com>
wrote:

I reserve the right to respond to e-mail. I also reserve the right of response in my manner, commercial unsolicited e-mail vendors, please take note. Using this message in any fashion constitutes acceptance of these terms.  With that said:
I reply to all junk E-Mail.  Over, and over, and over...  :)
If we all did, maybe we wouldn't get as much!

Personally I don't like at all the way all the Windows EXE files
look inside. When you look inside some Delphi compiled EXE file,
you see all your procedure and function names in pure ASCII-format.
And also all the variable names seem to be there in clearly redable format.
If you use lenghthy variable names, 'CustomerDataCopiedFromMainDatabase',
this will also increase the size of your EXE-file.

From the old DOS days I remember that there was no matter how long
variable names you have in your source code. The compiler would
replace it with a single pointer or integer, and your EXE will be
always the same size regardless of the variable name.

Or is there something I have missed? Should the variables be in
readable format even after Delphi Optimized compilation?
 Can somebody recommend some Windows EXE file compresser?

Markku Nevalainen

Well, the 190k's ARE a problem if you want to distribute the apps on
diskette. OK, 190k is fine since a disk is 1.44M but a Delphi project
easily gets to be some 4-500k. And if you have 3 apps you want to
distribute you'll need more than one disk.

OTOH, there is NO alternative.
As so many others already have said, VB requires dlls to be distributed,
and
yukk, what do I do when there are different versions of these dlls?
There
has to be problems with that...

You have the debug information in the EXE.  See Project Options to turn
it off.  This information is not loaded at run time.

Lance

Switching off Debug information seems to have minimal effect on an 800K
exe. probably 1 or 2K.

Does the Delphi Compiler not remove all unrefernced and unused code from
the EXE. Compare it with a small Windows EXE written in Visual or Borland
C.

Anybody any ideas...

Donagh

lhirsch <lhir...@ibm.net> wrote in article <32FF5474.2...@ibm.net>...

Ok, so you compress the files.

Have you tried talking to Bill Gates about your problem?  Maybe he can help
you

E.

Svante Granqvist <sva...@speech.kth.se> wrote in article
<32FE5846.1...@speech.kth.se>...

No I don't think so. There are these switches to turn of or on
in Delphi 1.0:

 -Project Options/Compiler / Debug Information     ON <--> OFF
 -Project Options/Linker / Include TDW debug info  ON <--> OFF
 -Environment Options /Compile with Debug Info     ON <--> OFF
 -Environment Options /Integrated Debugging        ON <--> OFF

I think that I have testede every single combination with these
switches, but my EXE keeps its size as 956 kB at minimum.
And in EXE there still is a lot of my variables in visible ASCII
format, that does not look out very efficient.

If you or anyone else has some suggestions about those switches,
with D1, please reply.

Markku Nevalainen

On 10 Feb 1997 21:13:29 GMT, "Donagh Kiernan" <d_kier...@vistech.ie>
wrote:

A hello world Delphi VCL based application is ~200k.  Including any of
the VCL will cause the entire VCL to be linked in.  (Don't forget in
Delphi 1.0 that you can use the w8loss program).

A hello world MFC Visual C++ or OWL Borland C++ program that has the
statically linked libraries is usually of an equal or larger size.

In Visual C++ or Borland C++ you can dynamically link with the runtime
library, which gives you a small exe, but means you have to distribute
a large dll with your application (the DLL for MFC4.0 is about 1 MB).
This option is not available in Delphi 1.0, or 2.0, but is rumoured to
be available in 3.0.  

A hello world Delphi windows API application (no VCL) is about 10k.
It is actually slightly smaller than the same application written in
straight C with the borland or Microsoft compilers.

So - if you compare comparable projects (windows api, windows
framework) between c and delphi,  they are close, with Delphi usually
being smaller.

Having the option in 3.0 to use a runtime dll will make some people
happy, but will undoubtably cause some distribution headaches.

Brian

Hello Kevin:

Best Regards, Ricardo.

--
;-D*****************************
Ricardo Santiago Cachero.
rsant...@sp-editores.es
*****************************;-D

You need vbrun??00.DLL where ?? runs from 1 to 10.
And several versions (with the same number, but still different) of the other
DLL's .

The Graphical Gome      (r...@ktibv.nl)

Senior Software Engineer

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