Making smaller EXEs?

[SlowCoder74]

I see that UPX is able to compress the header of my compiled executables.

Say I create a program with just 1 'shutdown' command, and compile it. The size is 635KB without UPX. With UPX it's 296KB. 635KB is HUGE, especially for just one command. UPX greatly reduces it by about 50%, but even at 296KB, that's pretty big for such a simple program.

What else can be done to shrink a file even smaller? Is there a way to only include required components of the header?

[water]

645KB is huge? I don't think so. The exe you see is a package of the AutoIt script interpreter and your source code.

If you use UDFs I recommend to use Obfuscator to get rid of unused code.

But you won't get the exe smaller than 300KB.

But that's no problem with the disks you have nowadays.

[BrewManNH]

On a 1GB flash drive, pretty small for a flash drive these days, you can fit over 1600 files if each file is 635KB. Where's the problem again?

[AdmiralAlkex]

Remember that you only need 1 interpreter, if your package consists of multiple scripts, then compile 1 to exe and everything else to a3x and you'll save quite a bit.

[funkey]

You can use a DOS Batch file or a visual basic script file to have a smaller file for shutting down your PC. Or just do NOT compile the AutoIt script,

If you want a smaller exe file, you have to use c/c++ language, but as mentioned above, size is now problem nowadays!

[Zedna]

What else can be done to shrink a file even smaller?

Use another programming language which can do compilation to native not interpreted code.

Also look here:

http://www.autoitscript.com/trac/autoit/wiki/AutoItNotOnToDoList

Modularized Compilation/variable sized compiled files: ...

[SlowCoder74]

645KB is huge? I don't think so. The exe you see is a package of the AutoIt script interpreter and your source code.

If you use UDFs I recommend to use Obfuscator to get rid of unused code.

But you won't get the exe smaller than 300KB.

But that's no problem with the disks you have nowadays.

I think of it this way ... I'm probably only using 1/100th of the actual interpreter code to run a simple command like "shutdown". Therefore I was inquiring if there was a way to trim/remove the unused portions. I guess something like the obfuscator you mentioned, but for the interpreter.

One of my projects at work is a tool that needs access to UAC for only some functions, but not others. An older version of it is being used by IT throughout our division, and works good on XP. Now I'm working on Win7 compatibility, and UAC gets in the way. The tool needs to be exactly 1 executable, downloaded via web. Unless I want UAC bugging people every time they run it, I've found that it's necessary to have 2 executables. Therefore, I've come up with the idea to piggyback the UAC enabled executable on the main one. When needed, the main EXE will extract the piggybacked one to the temp folder, and execute it. If a single EXE has a minimum size of 300KB, then I'm looking at a minimum of 600KB, probably closer to 700-800K once combined.

You can use a DOS Batch file or a visual basic script file to have a smaller file for shutting down your PC. Or just do NOT compile the AutoIt script,

If you want a smaller exe file, you have to use c/c++ language, but as mentioned above, size is now problem nowadays!

I appreciate the input, but the "shutdown" was just an example to demonstrate the use of a single command. I could have used 'msgbox(0,"","Hi")', just the same.

[water]

Even a web download of 700KB shouldn't be a problem.

[BrewManNH]

See post #4 for the answer to your "problem". Compile the second script to an .a3x file, use the first file to run the second file, see the command line references in the help file on how to do that.

[SlowCoder74]

See post #4 for the answer to your "problem". Compile the second script to an .a3x file, use the first file to run the second file, see the command line references in the help file on how to do that.

Will do.

Thank you all!

[Skitty]

Assembly.

Learn it. Use it. Die a spartan in the programming world.