[Coco] Re: mess questions

[Nathan Woods]

John R. Hogerhuis writes: 

> Thanks Nathan. How big do you think a coco3-only MESS would be? Seems
> like something fun to try. Do these tiny make files shorten the time to
> build at all? Mess takes forever. 
> 
> Main goal though is fitting it into a mini-linux-distro or dos boot
> disk.

Using "Tiny MESS" builds does shorten the build time greatly, as they omit 
non-relevant CPU cores, sound systems and drivers. 


As for size, a Tiny MESS (with Coleco) build for Win32 takes up about 2.8 
megs.  UPXing it trims it down to about 850k.  I'd imagine that a CoCo 3 
Tiny MESS would take up a bit more space. 


Keep in mind that there is still quite a bit of fat that could be trimmed 
off:
1.  This is on Win32, so there is stuff (namely the GUI) that would not be 
present on UNIX or DOS builds.
2.  All that the tiny builds do is remove other systems, CPUs and sound 
chips; currently no effort is made to slim down the core itself.  Things 
like the artwork system could be theoretically removed.
3.  Normally, builds are optimized for speed.  Optimizing for size may slim 
things down even further. 


 -N