Reducing the size of Windows standalone

[Magicgate Software - Skip Kimpel]

Thank you Richard.

SKIP

On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 1:29 PM, Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com>
wrote:

> Skip wrote:
>
>> My standalone file sizes have almost doubled / tripled since version 7.
>> Is
>> this all due to Unicode additions?  I have a file that always used to be
>> 3mb and now is climbing to 9mb with no additions to the coding.
>>
>> Just seems like quite a jump in size.
>>
>
> v6.7.5 had a Windows runtime engine weighing in at 3.5 MB, and in v7
> that's now 8.9 MB.
>
> A jump indeed, and I'm told much of it is related to Unicode libraries,
> for which I've heard mixed prognoses about the likelihood of having
> conditional inclusion at some point in the future.
>
> In the here-and-now, even at the current size it's a fraction of what
> ToolBook and many similar tools require, and unlike most of them the
> LiveCode engine is self-contained, only requiring DLLs for specialized
> things like databases.  I believe Xojo's core library is a bit smaller than
> LiveCode's, but not by as much as one might expect for a tool requiring
> lower-level compilation.  Last I looked the Python engine was at least
> twice as large as LiveCode's.
>
> I don't spend enough time on Windows to have a feel for how LC's engine
> size compares with other app sizes, and Linux apps generally favor heavy
> dependency on shared libraries so app sizes can be smaller but with
> compatibility risks LiveCode is usually immune to.
>
> On OS X, reviewing app sizes in general helps us appreciate that the new
> engine isn't all that large compared to other OS X apps, it's just that the
> older engines were very very small by such comparison.
>
> It's always been the case that xTalk app sizes start out large relative to
> functionality.  That is, if you make a window with a single button that
> displays "Hello World" in Microsoft Visual C++ and do the same thing in
> LiveCode, there will be a big difference.
>
> But with LiveCode this is a one-time hit.  As you add features to your app
> the engine stays the same size.  You can multiply features in your LiveCode
> app with only incremental increase in file size, but executable file size
> will multiply with other development systems, often ultimately surpassing
> what's needed to deliver that feature set in LiveCode.
>
> A comparison with other specific app sizes and more details can be found
> in this post from February:
> <http://www.runrev.com/pipermail/use-livecode//2015-February/211853.html>
>
> --
>  Richard Gaskin
>  Fourth World Systems
>  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
>  ____________________________________________________________________
>  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com
>
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