Why are binaries/executables so large on Windows?

[Chris Nicholson-Sauls]

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