Compiler: Size of generated executable file

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 1/12/10 22:31, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:24:06 -0500, Walter Bright
> <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
>
>> Other languages do appear to have smaller executables, but that's
>> often because the runtime library is dynamically linked, not
>> statically linked, and is not counted as part of the executable size
>> even though it is loaded into memory to be run. D's runtime library is
>> still statically linked in for the pragmatic reason that static
>> linking avoids the "dll hell" versioning problem for your customers.
>
> I hope this is not a permanent situation. Shared libraries (not
> necessarily DLLs) help reduce the memory usage of all the programs on
> the system that use the same libraries, and the footprint of the
> binaries. The "DLL hell" versioning problem AFAIK is only on Windows,
> and has nothing to do with using dlls, it has everything to do with
> retarded installers that think they are in charge of putting shared DLLs
> into your system directory (fostered by the very loose directory
> security model of Windows to begin with).
>
> My understanding of the "no shared library" problem of D was not that it
> was an anti-dll-hell feature but actually an unsolved problem with
> sharing the GC. If you are saying that even if someone solves the GC
> sharing problem that D still will produce mostly static exes, you might
> as well take D out back and shoot it now. I don't see any businesses
> using a language that is 15 years behind the curve in library
> production. If it were a problem that couldn't be solved, then there
> would be lots of languages that have that problem.

Hasn't that already been solved with ddl: 
http://www.dsource.org/projects/ddl/

> On all your other points, I agree that installs these days are bigger
> more because of media than binaries. I do have a problem with that in
> some cases. I don't want my scanner driver software to install 500MB of
> crap that I will never use when all I want to do is scan documents with
> a simple interface. I don't need "skins" for my word processor or help
> videos on how to use my mouse. Just install the shit that does the work,
> and leave the rest of my hard drive alone :)
>
> -Steve