What can be done to reduce executable size?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 12/10/11 9:39 AM, Bane wrote:
> Short term and long term suggestions ? Anything we can do ? I heard it
> is some problem with linking dead code?
>
>
>
> import std.stdio;
> int main(){
> writefln("Hello Bloat!");
> return 0;
> }
>
> dmd -release -O hello.d
>
> On Windows:
> v1.071 = 339 Kb
> v2.056 = 1017 Kb
>
> It looks very ugly and might distract some people.

In fact there was a low-hanging fruit, and I'm sure there are some more. 
This diff reduces the size of hello, world (compiled with -O -release 
-inline and after strip) from 700KB to 220 KB:

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/commit/b7f42ec925fb1d64564d48ea419e201bfc65ed53

Right now an executable starts at around 218KB, which includes druntime 
(gc, type info, the works). Importing std.stdio and using writeln() only 
adds a couple of KBs.


Andrei