UPX opinions ?
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Hi, I'm planning to release the first version of my new programm. I'm using a third party OpenSource Library ( OpenCASCADE ) with more than 60 dlls for 61Mb. My programm has also 10 Dlls ( not so big , but perhaps 2MB ). I'm thinking using UPX ( http://upx.sourceforge.net ) to compress the dlls and my exe. I tried it and I have a ratio of 30% ( it means that my complete distribution is only 30% the size of not compressed ). It seems to work fine. Do you know this product ? Is is stable enough to integrate it in my release ? Is it a good idea to use something like that ? Thanks, Stephane "It is ridiculous to claim that video games influence children. For instance, if PacMan affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms eating pills while listening to monotonous electronic music."
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Hi, I'm planning to release the first version of my new programm. I'm using a third party OpenSource Library ( OpenCASCADE ) with more than 60 dlls for 61Mb. My programm has also 10 Dlls ( not so big , but perhaps 2MB ). I'm thinking using UPX ( http://upx.sourceforge.net ) to compress the dlls and my exe. I tried it and I have a ratio of 30% ( it means that my complete distribution is only 30% the size of not compressed ). It seems to work fine. Do you know this product ? Is is stable enough to integrate it in my release ? Is it a good idea to use something like that ? Thanks, Stephane "It is ridiculous to claim that video games influence children. For instance, if PacMan affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms eating pills while listening to monotonous electronic music."
I've used for DLLs many times and found that it works fine. The only time I've had a problem with it was when I compressed a DLL with a HTML resource which I was accessing with a browser using the res:// protocol. UPX caused the HTML to get chewed up when it compressed it. Apart from this it seems fine. James Spibey I love the word naked, it's brilliant isn't it, 'naked'. When I was a kid I used to write the word naked on a bit of paper hundreds of times and rub my face in it - Jeff, Coupling, BBC2
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Hi, I'm planning to release the first version of my new programm. I'm using a third party OpenSource Library ( OpenCASCADE ) with more than 60 dlls for 61Mb. My programm has also 10 Dlls ( not so big , but perhaps 2MB ). I'm thinking using UPX ( http://upx.sourceforge.net ) to compress the dlls and my exe. I tried it and I have a ratio of 30% ( it means that my complete distribution is only 30% the size of not compressed ). It seems to work fine. Do you know this product ? Is is stable enough to integrate it in my release ? Is it a good idea to use something like that ? Thanks, Stephane "It is ridiculous to claim that video games influence children. For instance, if PacMan affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms eating pills while listening to monotonous electronic music."
I don't have any first hand experience with these .EXE packers, however I did seriously look into using them about a year ago for ED for Windows and my research led me to shy away from them. Various problems were raised such as slower app loading and slower execution, and loading errors under some circumstances. If you search around the Web you should find articles on these issues. It seems to me we already have enough on our plate with our own code, without bringing potential problems like these into the equation. Installers usually compress everything, so distribution size likely won't benefit from using a packer. You should also have separate distributions; one with everything and a second without the DLL's which are static (ie. don't change)so people that already have downloaded don't need to download the entire thing again. OpenCascade sure sounds impressive, but a bit of a monster. What does your app do? Neville Franks, Author of ED for Windows. www.getsoft.com
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I don't have any first hand experience with these .EXE packers, however I did seriously look into using them about a year ago for ED for Windows and my research led me to shy away from them. Various problems were raised such as slower app loading and slower execution, and loading errors under some circumstances. If you search around the Web you should find articles on these issues. It seems to me we already have enough on our plate with our own code, without bringing potential problems like these into the equation. Installers usually compress everything, so distribution size likely won't benefit from using a packer. You should also have separate distributions; one with everything and a second without the DLL's which are static (ie. don't change)so people that already have downloaded don't need to download the entire thing again. OpenCascade sure sounds impressive, but a bit of a monster. What does your app do? Neville Franks, Author of ED for Windows. www.getsoft.com
Hi Thanks for the advice. Neville Franks wrote: OpenCascade sure sounds impressive, but a bit of a monster. What does your app do? I want to developp an OpenSource CAD modeler ( like CATIA or other tools ). It is true that OpenCASCADE is very big, and you need a lot of time to be able to begin with. But I'm working with OpenCASCADE ( CAS.CADE before ) since 1995. So I know very well the product. The first version of my application is just a Data Exchange product. You can Read/Write IGES,STEP and native OpenCASCADE format ( BRep ) and display the CAD datas in an OpenGL based viewer. My project is ( will be ) hosted on sourceforge : http://exotk.sourceforge.net ( empty for the moment, I have to make an HTML Project Page ) http://sourceforge.net/projects/exotk I've already put some files under CVS, but I've seen that using CVS on Windows with VC is not very easy. For the moment, I'm using SourceSafe. BTW, if you want to know what will the application look like, you can see the screenshot of my article : http://www.codeproject.com/splitter/automaticsplitter.asp Stephane "It is ridiculous to claim that video games influence children. For instance, if PacMan affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms eating pills while listening to monotonous electronic music."
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Hi, I'm planning to release the first version of my new programm. I'm using a third party OpenSource Library ( OpenCASCADE ) with more than 60 dlls for 61Mb. My programm has also 10 Dlls ( not so big , but perhaps 2MB ). I'm thinking using UPX ( http://upx.sourceforge.net ) to compress the dlls and my exe. I tried it and I have a ratio of 30% ( it means that my complete distribution is only 30% the size of not compressed ). It seems to work fine. Do you know this product ? Is is stable enough to integrate it in my release ? Is it a good idea to use something like that ? Thanks, Stephane "It is ridiculous to claim that video games influence children. For instance, if PacMan affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms eating pills while listening to monotonous electronic music."
I have used UPX quite a lot without any problems. Many of my release builds actually invoke UPX on the target from VS. sonork ID: 100.9940
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Hi, I'm planning to release the first version of my new programm. I'm using a third party OpenSource Library ( OpenCASCADE ) with more than 60 dlls for 61Mb. My programm has also 10 Dlls ( not so big , but perhaps 2MB ). I'm thinking using UPX ( http://upx.sourceforge.net ) to compress the dlls and my exe. I tried it and I have a ratio of 30% ( it means that my complete distribution is only 30% the size of not compressed ). It seems to work fine. Do you know this product ? Is is stable enough to integrate it in my release ? Is it a good idea to use something like that ? Thanks, Stephane "It is ridiculous to claim that video games influence children. For instance, if PacMan affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms eating pills while listening to monotonous electronic music."
I have use UPX in many projects, my current project size was reduced by 65% with UPX. Tested on 95/98/NT/2000. No problem. Only issue I ever had was when I was trying to use custom RWX segment ( for fun anti-hacking protection for softice/ida wannabees ).... To give UPX credit it did warned me.... Simple adjustment to UPX code and I was in back business. Cool don't mess with me protection for open source code :-D Brian