This came up accidentally when someone asked for a copy of an old
program, and I found how D... big it was compared to what I am used to
passing around.
I have these two menu programs, one written in my usual F77style and
compiled with MS 3.31, which came to 44,676 bytes as an executable,
and which runs in DOS or Windows command line or I can double-click on
it in the directory, whatever, and it runs as expected, even on
Macintosh DOS emulators (or pretty much any machine around).
At some stage (2002, I think) I brought the source of this original
F77 program into CVF 6.6 and compiled it as a command-line program to
do absolutely the same job.
There IS a difference. In the first program I call the SPAWN function
for loading daughter programs for execution; in the Windows version I
had to call SYSTEM to do the same job, one line difference, even
though both actually use the SYSTEM function, but only the DOS program
uses SPAWN.
When these programs run, even I cannot tell which is which, since both
appear as full screen programs with the same font and colours and so
on, and no difference in behaviour at all.
BUT, the windows-compiled version is 299,008 bytes long!
Am I correct in assuming there must be unused code sitting in the
larger Windows version?
Obviously the two DO differ in one line of souce and so in executable
content.
But THAT much?
So, anybody have any ideas on what percentage of overhead a typical
for-Windows program carries?
I was thinking, there would be some sense in have ONE all-the-windows-
and-Fortran-library-stuff DLL, that and every "main" program loads
first.
I bought this point to the attention of Lahey, some time ago and they
saw the point and permited the distribution of a loadable DLL( with
most of the Lahey library inside), allowing small programs to be sent
commercially and so updatable by sending new small replacement main
modules.
So if I have 60 Windows programs, I could l have say 60 small modules
of about 60k each plus one humungous DLL of I guess 300K; total 3900k,
instead of 60 times 300k or 18 Megabyte to distribute?.
People wonder why I stick to F77 and DOS-in -Windows?
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