Creating smallest DLL file

Question

I have created a DLL file (library) with one assembler function. This file is 75kB size. How to make this file smaller? Like I suspect, there is an automatically included System unit. Can I exclude this unit from my dll file?

Answer 1

I googled your Issue, as it came to my mind in Visual C++ there are Debug&Release Modes. So maybe you can try creating a smaller Dll using the Release Mode. I found some settings for this: http://bugs.freepascal.org/bug_view_advanced_page.php?bug_id=18632
Maybe this helps you, but I'm not sure it will work because I didn't work with Pascal for like 2 years :)

Answer 2

1. Why? are you concerned about binary sizes on one hand, and have a 64-bit tag on the other?

2. Debug info, pass -Xs to strip debuginfo

3. Smartlinking, pass -XX (dead code elimination) 1+2 combines to -XXs

4. Avoid advanced functionality. Do NOT set any $Mode, the delphi compatible additions to system will bulk it up.

If you want to further reduce you will have to edit the RTL source and recompile it.

Answer 3

You can also try UPX to pack your DLL-s. I recently made a simple DLL in Delphi and here are some observations I made:

1) Delphi 7 made almost 2 times smaller file than Delphi XE3 (32bit, Release mode). Lazarus made the biggest file. So maybe older FPC can make smaller file?

2) I stripped all non-mine units from the library. I even replaced Math and Windows with my own, super-short versions. This reduced the file size about twice.

3) System unit is something you can't just remove, but there are ways to create your own, recompile and replace. I guess this is also possible with Lazarus/FPC.