larger executable building with DWT-WIN

[Kris]

This is where better support for D and dynamic-loading would make a very 
useful impact. It seems like .so works quite well under linux, but .dll 
support (from DMD) is still miserable under win32.

Would be really interesting to hear of your efforts (if any) to turn DWD-WIN 
into a .dll

- Kris



"John Reimer" <terminal.node at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:fqg43r$1if1$1 at digitalmars.com...
> yidabu wrote:
>
>> larger executable building with DWT-WIN
>>
>> A helloworld.exe build with DWT-WIN (-release), the executable size is
>> 1.93 MB :
>>
>> import dwt.widgets.Display;
>> import dwt.widgets.Shell;
>>
>> void main ()
>> {
>> Display display = new Display;
>> Shell shell = new Shell(display);
>>
>> shell.setText = "Hello DWT World";
>> shell.open;
>>
>> while (!shell.isDisposed)
>> if (!display.readAndDispatch)
>> display.sleep;
>>
>> display.dispose;
>> }
>>
>>
>>
>> build with DFL (-release), the exectuable size is 284 KB :
>>
>> import dfl.all;
>>
>> int main()
>> {
>> Form myForm;
>>
>> myForm = new Form;
>> myForm.text = "Hello world";
>>
>> Application.run(myForm);
>>
>> return 0;
>> }
>>
>> Anybody now What's cause this,  How larger executable size building with
>> DWT-WIN ?
>>
>>
>>
>
> It's bigger for several reasons (in no particular order):
>
> 1) DWT is much larger than DFL with many more widgets.  This means more
> power... at a cost.
>
> 2) DWT supports multiple windows platforms in one library; this means it
> contains specific support for both win98, windows XP, and Vista (among
> others).  This means more code; the advantage is that binaries built with
> dwt are more likely to be compatible with all windows platforms.  The
> disadvantage, of course, is extra bloat.
>
> 3) The porting emphasis for DWT has been to "get it working"; little work
> has yet gone into optimizing it for size.
>
> 4) DWT has a extensive network of interdependencies among it's modules and
> many of its widgets have complex inheritance structures; it's almost like
> spaghetti to put it plainly.  This forces a large number of objects to be
> linked in that aren't necessarily visibly used.  This is probably not the
> case with dfl, which has a decidedly lean profile since it was built from
> scratch for D (not ported from a large Java project).
>
> 5) Porting from Java means adopting a large number of mechanisms that 
> aren't
> strictly necessary in D.  This style forces a larger footprint on DWT.
> Some other mechanisms are important for exception recovery and thread
> safety.
>
> That said, there is a plenty of opportunity for size improvement in DWT 
> that
> hasn't even been touched yet.  It will never shrink to the size of DFL, 
> but
> I imagine we can slim it down a bit from it's current size.  There are 
> some
> cleanup techniques still waiting to be applied to the code base.
>
> Even so, please understand that DWT, like SWT, is a large GUI library and
> does not compete directly with DFL.  DFL wins hands down for size,
> simplicity, and clean-coding.  DWT, I think, is a power-house of features
> and will reach audiences that are a little more "greedy" for 
> cross-platform
> support and comprehensive GUI interface design in their applications. :)
>
> -JJR
>
>
>