Comments on: Smallest application size for win32 console application

By: Random T.

Random T. — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:04:41 +0000

Hey, nice tips. Perhaps I’ll buy a bottle of beer to the man from that forum who told me to go to your site

By: Hamid

Hamid — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:53:12 +0000

thank you so much

By: jkalmbach

jkalmbach — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:20:23 +0000

These are linker options!:

cl /c /O1 /GS- smallest.cpp
link /subsystem:console /MERGE:.rdata=.text /ALIGN:16 smallest.obj kernel32.lib

By: Hamid

Hamid — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:44:45 +0000

Thanks Jochen. seems like mine doesn’t understand /ALIGN and /MERGE.
what should i do?

C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop>cl /c /O1 /GS- /ALIGN:16 /MERGE:.rdata=.text main
.cpp
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 15.00.30729.01 for 80×86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

cl : Command line warning D9002 : ignoring unknown option ‘/ALIGN:16′
cl : Command line warning D9002 : ignoring unknown option ‘/MERGE:.rdata=.text’
main.cpp

By: __chkstk? | keyongtech

__chkstk? | keyongtech — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:49:38 +0000

[…] It comes from this code Security-Checks for the stack. You need to compile with /GS- ! See also: http://blog.kalmbach-software.de/200…e-application/ Greetings […]

By: jkalmbach

jkalmbach — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 09:17:37 +0000

Yes, I did forget the /MERGE option! The NOWIN98 is not supported anymore (VS2008) and has no effect. The merging of both section will reduce the size to 1024 bytes.

Also the usage of “/ALIGN:16″ will reduce the size to 688 bytes!

Thanks for your comment Koro!

By: Koro

Koro — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 02:11:18 +0000

You forgot /OPT:NOWIN98 and /MERGE:.rdata=.text It can be brought down to 1kb easily.

Now if one does not care about Win9x compatibility, you can use /ALIGN:16 too.