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Free Pascal linking (Developers)

posted by marcov, 11.04.2008, 14:20

> > No idea, and no dos maintainer to ask. win32 ones are 20k, but the
> > internal linker strips/smartlinks better because it "knows" pascal.
>
> For sure there are more Windows machines than DOS ones. But I'm skeptical
> that that 20k is static (probably requires MSVCRT).
Depends on your definition. Of course FPC doesn't use MSVCRT, since it is not a (MS) C compiler?!?!?

Nor does it use other DLLs, except for the two dlls that are effectively the interface to the kernel on windows: user32 and kernel32. However disallowing that would be like disallowing interrupts on Dos.

> I'm not saying you can't do it that small, just that most don't. (If it does, kudos!)
It does. FPC is also the compiler with the lowest memory use on the shootout, killing gcc. (though that is something different than binary size)

> > While FPC doesn't like unnecessary bloat, functionality goes over size.
> So
> > a few kb aren't considered a problem.
>
> It's even mentioned on their wiki as a known issue. I mean, for now, "UPX
> is your friend" (sorry, Japheth, but it's true!).

FPC does not recommend UPX, unless it is 100% required. And usually it is not, see http://wiki.freepascal.org/Size_Matters

> Besides, as has been
> mentioned before, "Hello world" is a bad example, not real world, overkill
> for FPC. Ideally, we should be comparing something like FreeBASIC or DJGPP
> (GCC) or GPC vs. FreePascal (using the same LIBC, I assume).
FPC doesn't use any libc. Not even on Unix. It is not a Unix/C compiler in disguise, but a multiplatform compiler. This is also why it is one of the few ones that target stuff like nokia phones, wince, classic Mac OS and (in the past) classic AmigaOS.

However FPC doesn't really train on small binary size, it just has a slight example, specially with benchmarky programs like "hello world" due to its architecture.

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