Thread: Program size problem

Yesterday, when I compiled the same program, the size of it was about 450 kb-s, today when I use the same file, it takes 1250kb. I tested a bit, when I included windows.h yesterday, the size of the program remained, but today it adds 650kb-s to the file size, but including iostream always adds 450kb-s. What does the windows.h include to my file, that isnt necessary?
Sorry for my bad english :P

Probably a whole lot of junk. Did you also check that it is not in debug mode?

Considering the entire windows api is declared in windows.h, it includes a lot. there is a macro you can use: WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN or something like that to cut out stuff that people generally don't use. But the upside is it adds 650or so amount of data to start out with, but does not increase any more. So your program size will now grow as you add stuff which should be fairly slowly.

including windows.h does not affect the final size of the program at all. The linker only pulls the functions that you use in your program, and the functions/data that those functions reference, into your executable program. As with any library, the linker does NOT add everything in the library to your program. If that were the case, every program you write would be very very huge.

using a macro such as WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN also does not affect the size of the final program, it only helps speed up the compiling process (preprocessor) by not including some of the seldom-used header files.

So the most likly cause of the program size difference is between release and debug mode compiles, as sand_man suggested. including windows.h, by itself, will not cause that behavior.

Yes it started after I turned the debug mode on. But after that, when I turned it off, the progs are still 1.25mb-s. HELP! I am going to reinstall my Dev-C++ because of that.

I dont't know if that works with windows-exes produced by g++.
Running strip on the executables reduces the size a lot.
Kurt

are you certain you are looking at the right *.exe file? maybe you need to delete all *.o files in the project directory then rebuild everything. There might be some object files build for debug and others build for release.

`strip' undeclared (first use this function)

Originally Posted by dwks

Well then declare it!

What are you talking about? Do you have the wrong thread?

Thats the error what I get when I use that strip thing from that link I got.

Originally Posted by laserlight

That's unfortunate, but at this point and in this case it is normal. Read the MinGW FAQ on "Why is my C++ binary so large?", since Dev-C++ uses the MinGW port of GCC by default. If after using strip the executable size is still too large, you may consider using UPX.


But Dev-C++ 4, aside from being outdated itself, uses an outdated compiler set.

That means Dev-C++ 4 is much better than Dev-C++ 4.9.9.2!

Originally Posted by maxorator

`strip' undeclared (first use this function)

It's strip.exe and it should be in your compilers bin folder.
Kurt