[ACCEPTED]-Reduce windows executable size-linker
You can't mix the CRT/MFC dlls. Going from 18 memory...
As the other answer suggested, you 17 can #define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN and VC_EXTRALEAN. These 16 probably won't help though. They tend to 15 be about minimizing build time - not the 14 final exe size.
Short of rebuilding MFC (Which 13 is an option - you could rebuild it /Os, or 12 if you are feeling really cheeky, /GL - but 11 this will probably lead to more downstream 10 fun - hopefully it's already built /Gy).
OK. Simple 9 things to try. Build your app with /GL 8 /Os /GF /Gy /GA. In the linker you more 7 or less want /OPT:REF and /OPT:ICF and /LTCG.
I 6 have to say - a release build from 30k to 5 megabytes is a bit much. You could also 4 pass /map: to the linker and see what's 3 taking all that space - but that's very 2 very tedius.
It almost sounds like MFC wasn't 1 built with /Gy - but that would be surprising.
For programs using the CRT, you can use 8 the technique in this video by Per Vognsen on achieving 3.5KB executables. Windows\System32\msvcrt.dll ships 7 with every Windows since 95, so by linking 6 to that, you needn't package the Visual 5 C++ Redistributable with your app.
The basic 4 process is:
- Run Visual Studio's
dumpbinonSystem32\msvcrt.dlland pipe it to a file - Run a simple filter (
awk '{print $4}') to create amsvcrt.deffile - Run VS's
libonmsvcrt.defto generatemsvcrt.lib - Disable default libraries in your project (
/NODEFAULTLIBon thelinkcommand line) - Disable some Visual C++ checks (
/GS-and remove any/RTC<x>flags)
Link against kernel32.lib and msvcrt.lib and voilà, your 3 tiny executable has zero dependencies besides 2 the OS.
(n.b.: To optimize for size (/O1), specify 1 memset as an intrinsic as detailed here.)
I'm not sure how to strip the executable, but 4 another thought is to compress it, for example 3 using upx, which will decompress it and run 2 it in place... Does that reduce the size 1 enough for you?
You can try Dependency Walker to check which DLLs that your 4 static EXE file depends on, then if it depends 3 on a library you are certain it exists at 2 your client's machine, you can compile without 1 it and reduce the size.
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