Profiling DLL/LIB Bloat

Question

I've inherited a fairly large C++ project in VS2005 which compiles to a DLL of about 5MB. I'd like to cut down the size of the library so it loads faster over the network for clients who use it from a slow network share.

I know how to do this by analyzing the code, includes, and project settings, but I'm wondering if there are any tools available which could make it easier to pinpoint what parts of the code are consuming the most space. Is there any way to generate a "profile" of the DLL layout? A report of what is consuming space in the library image and how much?

Answer 1

When you build your DLL, you can pass /MAP to the linker to have it generate a map file containing the addresses of all symbols in the resulting image. You will probably have to do some scripting to calculate the size of each symbol.

Using a "strings" utility to scan your DLL might reveal unexpected or unused printable strings (e.g. resources, RCS IDs, __FILE__ macros, debugging messages, assertions, etc.).

Also, if you're not already compiling with /Os enabled, it's worth a try.