Size difference between ESIX 386 and ISC X386 binaries and bugs?

Chin Fang fangchin at leland.Stanford.EDU
Mon Apr 8 06:58:37 AEST 1991


I have been trying to port some X clients to my ESIX using libs built by 
Thomas Roell.  Due to my small hard disk (110 Megs only), this is the best 
I can do for now.  Besides, there are certain clients from the X386 
distribution won't work right out of the box:  A list is given below:

1. xterm tek mode can change font size using pop-up menu options. Once
   the menu is bought up using Cntl-middle mouse button, clicking on any
   font size has no effect at all.  Large font is always used.
2. xlock does not validate use passwd correctly.  It won't let me get back in.
3. xload does not show the correct load average -> a RC circuit charging curve
   is shown instead.  

   NOTE: the standard xload client from X11R4 tape 1 distribution will NOT
         work correctly due to the fact that nlist(3C) call won't get the
         correct sysinfo struct address so the entire thing will quit immed-
         iately afterwards.  I used the one at patch level 18.
4. the -all option of xkill apparently is disabled. [anyone dares to use it?]

Other than these four, the rest are fine after proper resources set up. 
Nice ones like xless work right out of box (again patch level 18)

NOW the interesting part.  I am still using gcc 1.37.1 for xclient building,
glenn at cs.utexas.edu has been kindly comparing his notes with me.  We have found 
something very interesting....

If one rebuild everything from scratch in ESIX, the size of typical xclients
are 20% ~ 30% smaller than the size of their respective counterpart from 
Thomas' distribtuion.

One example -> xload  -> using ESIX rebuilt shared libs -> 33246  bytes
               xload  -> using ISC shared libs but built in ESIX -> 77338 bytes

Note, I have used -s option. cprs and mcs won't do you any good in this case.

This is really interesting, Of course I would like to save every byte of my 
small hard disk space.  But I can't figure out why there are such differences.
Could someone more knowledgeable please provide me some insight?  A summary is 
promised if there is enough interest.

Chin Fang
Mechanical Engineering Department
Stanford University
fangchin at leland.stanford.edu

ps. xterm tek mode bug exists both in ESIX rebuild and the original ISC version
    xload ISC version doesn't work correctly in ESIX, rebuild version works
    correctly.  [How about in ISC? does the original work?]
    xlock ISC version doesn't work correctly in ESIX.  ESIX rebuild version
    for now not available for testing.  [I will build it later, so will Glenn]
    xkill -all is an option that I don't care.



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