exe file size

[John Reimer]

Hello Jarrett,

> On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 10:46 AM, Jeffrey Rennie
> <surferjeff at excite.com> wrote:
> 
>> John Reimer wrote:
>> 
>>> Hello Bill,
>>> 
>>>> I think the build time of dwt apps is a much bigger issue right now
>>>> than the size of exes.  The size of exes can be reduced using hacks
>>>> like upx, but there is no fix for the long build times as far as I
>>>> know.
>>>> 
>>>> --bb
>>>> 
>>> Totally agree.  The size is just an annoyance.  But currently the
>>> build times are pretty bad.  Recently, I've been frustrating over
>>> this especially while working on the Browser port.  Everytime I want
>>> to test a fix, I have to recompile... which takes ages.  This seems
>>> to be partly due to the dsss dependency (recent version is sloooow).
>>> I've been thinking of adding some sort of shell script or "make"
>>> file to see if this can be improved... at least for sanities' sake.
>>> :-(
>>> 
>>> -JJR
>>> 
>> Naturally, for some of us, .exe size is more important.
>> Specifically, for those of us building software that will be
>> downloaded by users at home.
>> 
>> But then again, I always build GUIs using native libraries--WTL on
>> Win32 and Objective-C on Mac--so I'm likely not a DWT customer
>> anyway.
>> 
> I'm pretty sure DWT uses the underlying native GUI APIs.  At least it
> looked that way when I saw it demonstrated.
> 


Yes, it does so on all platforms (GTK on Linux, win32/64 API on Windows, 
Cocoa on Mac).  That's the main principle behind SWT and the deciding factor 
for us choosing to port it :).  This is what differentiates it from other 
Java frameworks like Swing.  In D, the size appears to be a result of both 
the SWT design (and shear size of the project) and the compiler/linker implementation.

-JJR