Binary size of statically linked java application

Tue Nov 28 18:22:00 GMT 2006

David Daney wrote:
> <snip>
>> Libgcj-3.4.3 is running embedded on mipsel-linux on several hundred 
> thousand HD television sets.

Wow, cool!
> If you are interested in the patches we 
> did to trim down libgcj for that, let me know. The basic technique is 
> to statically link and then look at the linker map to see if there are 
> things included that you think should be unneeded. If so, modify the 
> libgcj source so that they are no longer referenced.

That's pretty much the same as my approach with the difference that in 
my approach, GCJ doesn't have to be recompiled after every change and 
libgcj.a can be reused in the original state.
That's because after having completely created a stub, the original 
libgcj.a can be used again. As soon as the stub is linked into the the 
binary, the objects from the archive won't be pulled in any more 
(because the depencies are already satisfied).
So I usually remove all objects with e.g. GUI classes, create a binary 
with all remaining objects (without libgcj.a of course) and resolve all 
depencies. This way, all depencies for the GUI classes will always be 
satisfied when using the stub. No matter what the source is...
Marco