size of Win executable

[focana]

Hi all,

I am a new user of Lazarus but with some experience with
Borland Pascal and Delphi. First of all, I will like to thank to the
Lazarus development team for the possibility of using the
Pascal language.

I have a program coded in Pascal with a GUI developed in Delphi
under Windows.
Some weeks ago I decided to get a Lazarus version of this program.
In order to practice with Lazarus, I designed the GUI with Lazarus
from the scratch. My problem is that I have observed that
the Lazarus executable release is a file whose size is
around 6826KB, much bigger than the Delphi executable, which
has a size of 478KB.  ¿Is  a so big difference normal ?

Many thanks in advance

[RudieD]

Please check the Wiki. (http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/File_size_and_smartlinking)

[felipemdc]

This is also on the FAQ on the Wiki

[Avram]

Shortly: Use strip to strip debug data (at least this is working in Linux, but I think you'll get strip.exe with Windows version of Lazarus). Then you can use UPX or othere exe compressor to additionally compress executable.

[Gintas]

I am using 0.9.24 and tried to compile basic program with LCL,some kind a notepad. I tried variuos linking options,but always get big 11.5mb executable file. I tried to check all options as in image from wiki page above.

I will try command line options. I would be a mircale to get a file less than one MB.

That huge executables stops me from making some projects on Lazarus IDE.

[Almindor]

That's really sad.. are you still using diskettes? Might be better to update, such a horrible 1mb on todays 120gb drives, must be killing the customers...

[LazaruX]

Hey Alminador2, its not a question of diskettes, you see, I have installed Lazarus on a USB stick (2 GB) and all my projects are there, and compilying, compyling, now I already have 600 MB of disk full, thats a lot on a USB stick.
However the solution is already available, so I invite newbies to read the FAQ, questions like the one above are so frustrating for old forum readers

[Leledumbo]

I tried variuos linking options

such as?

Try to find these switch in compiler options dialog, then check them (uncheck others):
-CX -XX -Xs -Os

An empty form should have a size about 900 KB.

[MisterKode]

I tried all the options as well and my executable comes out at 12 meg no matter what I do. For a program with only 2 buttons, a few labels and editboxes, it sure seems to be a huge filesize    :?

[Leledumbo]

There seems to be something wrong with the linker, just do manual strip as suggested above.
e.g.: strip -s yourprogram

[arnoldb]

All

This question comes up so frequently - Is there a way to add a 'sticky' subject on the forums so that everyone can get it the moment they start browsing the forums?

Just a thought.... But it might be handy