Why are binaries/executables so large on Windows?

[Tristam MacDonald]

Having searched the newsgroup, I had only found reports of UPX not working with DMD produced executables. I guess the bugs have been fixed in one or the other since the last discussion.

Chris Nicholson-Sauls Wrote:
> Tristam MacDonald wrote:
> > But 70k is an impressive overhead for an empty main function... And how will an executable packer help when most of them are incompatible with DMD?
> 
> UPX works with DMD just fine.  I use it with my own code.
> http://upx.sourceforge.net/
> 
> To see how much difference it'd make, I wrote this empty program:
> module empty;
> void main () {}
> 
> With DMD 1.018/Tango/WinXP it compiled to 102,940 bytes (100.5 KB).
> I ran: upx -9 empty.exe
> It packed down to 44,032 bytes (43 KB).
> 
> I consider that a pretty nice improvement.  :)
> 
> -- Chris Nicholson-Sauls