Tell me more ×
Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 4 down vote favorite

Many of us know that Delphi executables are little bit gigantic, but again it is acceptable as nowadays 1.5 mb is not a big issue in PC.

But what about mobile devices? Currently Firemonkey supports iOS and in the near future it is going to Android and so on. Isn't 4 mb of executable size for mobile devices is too much for a simple application?

Will Delphi team try to reduce the size of executable in the future OR is it possible to do without loosing most of the features in Firemonkey?

share|improve this question
Just a nitpick, Delphi shells out to Free Pascal when compiling for iOS. So those arent actually 'Delphi' executables. At least not until they get a native ARM compiler. – GrandmasterB Mar 5 '12 at 20:08
The size isn't due to FreePascal, it's due to the libraries, the framework, that is what makes it big. – Warren P Mar 12 '12 at 18:54

2 Answers

up vote 6 down vote

It depends on the device.

Personally I think that 4MB is not a big deal for either Android or iOS. These devices have several GB of storage, with capacity to handle much more. And, they have high speed data connections even over a cellular network.

I've downloaded apps (mostly games) for both platforms that are 30 MB and didn't give it a second thought.

share|improve this answer
Yes i agree with you but it is unacceptable to have 4 mb for a blank form. – Vibeeshan Dec 9 '11 at 14:12
2  
That's a silly measurement, Vibeeshan. Think about it for a minute. Nobody actually ships empty apps, and so the difference is likely to be between a 26 meg native app and a 30 meg FMX app. The extra 4 megs represents months of your time saved by such a framework. – Warren P Mar 5 '12 at 14:42
up vote 2 down vote

It is almost 100% certain that the answer is no.

First, the commercial reality of commercial products; It is impossible for a commercial application to grow and succeed by decreasing its features.

So the answer to whether or not it is likely that smaller applications will become possible, using a framework, is NO, because the only likely change in future is that each empty app will become larger and larger as the support code which enables more and more features in each release, grows larger and larger.

If you want the absolute smallest applications, you will have to natively develop a completely separate codebase for each mobile platform that you wish to support. You probably are aware that by doing things this way, you will get the absolute smallest app possible on each platform, but you will have to rewrite each app almost completely (you can share assets like bitmap images and sounds between platforms, but that's about it.)

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.