[fpc-pascal] making FPC more code optimized

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Jonas Maebe wrote:
> On 29 Apr 2012, at 14:23, Jorge Aldo G. de F. Junior wrote:
> 
>> What would be usefull is to move the loads of code stored in
>> sysutils/runtime into a dll/so.
> 
> That's mainly useful if the external API of the RTL will ever stabilize, which is certainly not the case today. Otherwise you create a dynamic library hell.

I had to download somebody's archive viewer a few weeks ago: first there 
was his binary, then there were his custom DLLs, then there was the MS 
runtime. I think it came to about 100Mb in total, which made the 
equivalent written using Lazarus look pretty good- once we'd thrashed 
out some smartlinking issues.

However there's a definite acceptance problem: in the past I've talked 
to people who insisted in programming in C "because the customer might 
be bothered about what language we use". Since ABIs (i.e. calling 
conventions etc.) have settled down a lot since those days it should, in 
theory, no longer be an issue: but I suspect that many old prejudices 
remain.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]