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Re: [wmx] wm2 vs wmx - why is the wmx executable so large?

Sven Oliver Moll - Thu Jul 08 21:33:59 1999

On Tue, 6 Jul 1999, John and Catherine Allen wrote:

>
>I've been recompiling wmx and wm2 and have been surprised at how much
>larger the wmx executable is:
>
>wm2: 130774 bytes
>wmx: 669368 bytes
>
>The wmx source code is not, I think, 5 times larger than wm2, so where
>does this difference come from?
This can have a lot of causes. First of all here's my wmx
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root        86644 Feb 16 21:09 /usr/local/bin/wmx

First cause of the size of the binary is the OS. A 64 Bit OS (Linux/Alpha,
OSF1/Alpha or Solaris 7 with 64 Bit Support) will always have bigger binaries
than a 32 Bit one. Next one is: Does it contain symbol tables. These are only
useful for debugging - to trace where your wmx crashes. How is the code
optimized, for speed or for size or a compromize. Do you use the pixmap
feature? This will blow the binary. Is wmx linked dynamic or static? A static
one does contain all code, a dynamic one will load it from the libraries
during runtime. I'm also using QNX, where XFree has no dynamic libraries yet.
There wmx has a size >500K. That's all I can think of right now.

To get a smaller wmx try first 'strip wmx' and if it's still to large for you
remove the pixmap feature.

Greetings,
SvOlli
-- 
  _______
 (  /\           | "Die Milch ist doch noch gut." -
__)v\/lli a.k.a. | "Ja, aber das war vorgestern!"
Sven Oliver Moll |   -- Bjoern Weber



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