I plan on leaving it in. In fact it does zip up quite well in both platforms so the size of the distribution isn't that much of a factor. It had just shocked me at first when I saw the size of the executable. I had forgotten about the fact that we have the debug stuff in it now.

1.
The main reason is the -gl switch. It adds the line information. Output file grow about 2 to 5 times.
2.
Since two months the images are resources and build into the executable as well.
3.
Lazarus grew (nearly 10.000 lines in the last month)

Marco van de Voort wrote

IIRC -gl is turned on.

Dohhhhh!

I new I was forgetting something. That will do it.

Are you including compiler/source/ide/source/binaries? 362K sounds like binaries only.
Chris

IIRC -gl is turned on.

strip lazarus.exe

or

stripw lazarus.exe

Eehhh.... I turned on that switch so ppl can get a bit more feedback on crashes. If you now distribute bins without the info then I can remove the switch.

Maybe create 2 versiouns, one with and one without info.

Marc

No, leave it on, specially for the unix platforms. If people there want to make it smaller they can still strip it themselves.

Can someone explain to me what has caused the application to grow so LARGE?

I can't specifically compare the Linux version but the Win32 version of Lazarus went from 362K in size to 3.5Meg in size. What accounts for all of the extra size? I can't verify if the Linux version has grown and equal amount but it is also over 3.6Meg.