[fpc-devel] Delphi smart-linking perspective ( Language change and implementation ... )

[Jonas Maebe]

On 31 May 2009, at 09:29, Sergei Gorelkin wrote:

> Inoussa OUEDRAOGO wrote:
>> Hi
>> At http://blogs.embarcadero.com/abauer/2009/05/29/38888
>> This could drastically reduce Lazarus executable size.
> Doubt that. Just another feature ported from .NET,

I don't think it is very specific to .NET. We use similar techniques  
for e.g. cthreads and cwstring under Unix. And I also used it in the  
fix for http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=12704

> Besides, FPC already has the WPO.

WPO can sometimes help a little in such situations, but not very much.

> Has anyone tried it on Lazarus?

Yes, the but the results are not very impressive. The reason is due to  
the way the LCL is constructed, almost every declared class can  
theoretically be instantiated. On the other hand, I read that recently  
the LCL was restructured a bit to improve the situation, so maybe the  
results would be better now.

Also note that WPO can do little about published methods (since it  
must assume that these can all be called via RTTI).


Jonas