Compiling "static" applications with SWT/GTK

Wed Dec 3 18:24:00 GMT 2003

Bryce wrote:
> My idea for static applications is to have a
> runtime option that dumps out a list of classes that are actually
> initialized/used by the application, which is then fed back into the
> compiler (and maybe combined with some static analysis) to generate an
> optimized static executable that contains only the required bits of the
> runtime. JET has a deployment/control panel application that does
> something like this.

JOVE does the same thing with it's "smartlog" utility.
http://www.instantiations.com
If I remember correctly, JOVE also has a bunch of canned "required classes"
lists for specific packages, which are often all you need. Or maybe I'm
confusing it with JET.
Andrew wrote:
> Not a bad idea, but this seems very fragile. How would anyone know
> for sure which classes an application needed? A few test runs
> wouldn't do it.

It depends on the application. Many embedded systems, for example, have a
limited and well-defined feature set, so you don't need very many runs to
exercise everything.