Re: [eclipse-clp-users] compact eclipse platform

  luke2k4_at_gmail.com wrote:
> Hi All,
> I am writing to ask if there is a convenient way to compile a set of eclipse
> libraries into one assembly that could be loaded at start-up of the eclipse
> engine ?
> I would like the platform to be as compact as possible containing only the
> necessary libraries compiled in one libs_all.eco file which would be loaded
> at eclipse start-up..
> 
> I've tried the following approach:
> I've loaded the solver and therefore all necessary libraries got loaded.
> Than used a short eclipse script to:
> 
>    1. get a list of all compiled files
>    2. filter out those that belong to the solver ( leaving only the library
>    files belonging to the platform )
>    3. concatenate the files to one lib_all.ecl
>    4. compile lib_all.ecl to lib_all.eco
> 
> than use the lib_all when starting eclipse.exe with -b option , or better to
> include the assembly when running the eclipse via the c interface.
> I am running into some problems during point 4.
> 
> I would be grateful if someone could let me know if there is an easy way to
> prepare such a compact eclipse platform.
> 
Hi Luke,

It is not very clear from what you wrote what exactly you are after. For 
example, do you want to distribute an ECLiPSe that is as small as 
possible (to run your application), or if you want the ECLiPSe to occupy 
as small a memory footprint as possible when you run it?

If you want to reduce the file sizes of the programs you need, then 
using eco format may not be the best, because it is not a very compact 
representation, and the size of an eco file can be larger than the 
original ECLiPSe source file.

The compiled ECLiPSe code in the eco format is portable, in that you can 
compile it on one platform and load it on another platform, even between 
platforms with different word lengths (as long as you avoid things like 
integers that might be too big in the platform with smaller word 
length). There are various issues that prevents the raw binary form of 
the abstract machine code stored in a runtime ECLiPSe to be directly 
portable. Aside from the obvious ones like word length and absolute 
addresses, some are more subtle, such as the location of an attribute in 
an attributed variable depends on the order in which the modules 
defining the attribute are loaded.

Putting everything into a single eco file will also not compact the 
total size of the file you need significantly, because the size of the 
resulting ecofile (in number of bytes) will be the same as the sum of 
all the individual eco files.

There are also some tricky issues with having a single eco file at the 
moment, and ECLiPSe does not provide a way to do this currently.

You can reduce the size of the ECLiPSe distribution, as well as its 
memory footprint, by using the runtime ECLiPSe package (available as the 
eclipse_rt tarball) as a starting point. This ECLiPSe does not have a 
toplevel nor debugging facilities, as the ECLiPSe files for these 
functionalities (they are written in ECLiPSe itself) are not included.
Of course, this is only suitable for running ECLiPSe applications, and 
not for development of your programs.

The runtime package currently includes most of the libraries in addition 
to the kernel, but you can throw these out if you are not using them.

The runtime package will reduce the size of ECLiPSe code you need to 
include with your system, but it does not change the low-level ECLiPSe 
size (the part of ECLiPSe written in C). To reduce this, you will need 
to compile ECLiPSe on your own. One obvious thing you can do is to 
compile ECLiPSe without bignum support (i.e. support for integers of 
unlimited size). bignum support is provided by thr GNU GMP library, so 
if you do not need bignums and rationals (which require bignums), you 
can use an ECLiPSe without GMP. This will reduce the size of the binary 
file, as well as the memory footprint.

Sorry for being so long, and I hope it is of some help!

Cheers,

Kish

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