Small Executables - Brian Raiter - Muppetlabs

[gadget42]

found an interesting link while searching some old files.

http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.html

forum search revealed an earlier mention.

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,11335.msg59487.html#msg59487

enjoyed strolling through Brian's works via breadbox.

you can also find him on twitter(https://twitter.com/br903)

sharing is caring, ymmv.

modified: adding another link from old file(which mentioned the OP link)

http://www.phreedom.org/research/tinype/

[vinceASPECT]

Hello F,

small makes sense sometimes.

What is revealing is that it can often be the case
that small apps can be "far more powerful" and sleek than counterparts at thousands
of times greater size. (bytes)  (Kilobytes)

it's quite extreme. Some recent web  browsers at near 300 to 400 megabytes....
versus web browsers i know of at 20 kilobytes.  THey literally do the exact same thing.

.......seems so

Thx
C.

[Rich]

Hi gadget42
I'm familiar with that muppetlabs article. It is an interesting exercise in reducing a tiny program that does virtually
nothing to the smallest size possible, but that's where it ends. For the vast majority of programs, switching to
assembler is not practical. In addition, once you are dealing with a program that actually does something, its
size will make the savings from those techniques irrelevant.

Last year a thread was started on the size of executables produced by GCC and why they were getting bigger.
I created a thread that addressed that over here:
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,23623.0.html

[vinceASPECT]

Hello,

Yes, techniques and such do vary.
Some operating systems (similar to Linux) are assembler
and so extremely less large.


Thx.
C.

[gadget42]

@Rich
thanks for all your wonderful efforts and insights! definitely thought-provoking!