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CRINKLER - Compressing linker for Windows specialized for 4k intros
Aske Simon Christensen "Blueberry/Loonies"
Rune L. H. Stubbe "Mentor/TBC"
Version 1.4 (January 19, 2013)
VERSION HISTORY
---------------
19.01.13: 1.4: Output EXE files work with recent NVIDIA drivers.
New zero-section header layout saving around 30-50 bytes.
Forwarded RVA imports supported via link-time forwarding.
Dynamic C++ initializers supported.
Support for producing Large Address Aware executables.
Crinkler is Large Address Aware, handling larger inputs.
Report all unresolved symbols and the location of each.
Better resolving of ambiguous label references in report.
Various adjustments to textual output.
/RECOMPRESS overwrites input file by default.
05.03.11: 1.3: Fixed Crinkler crash on some AMD systems.
Header size reduced by 21 bytes.
Slightly improved model hash function.
/OVERRIDEALIGNMENTS option to specify label alignments.
No limit on the number of calls in call transform.
Import code and entry point movable by section reordering.
Fixed bug in handling of files with absolute path.
Fixed labels in report showing up in the wrong section.
Crinkler writes .dmp files in case of a crash.
05.09.09: 1.2: Output EXE files are now Windows 7 compatible.
Output EXE files are no longer Windows 2000 compatible.
Header size reduced by 16 bytes.
Non-range import code is (usually) slightly smaller.
Slightly improved section ordering estimation.
/RECOMPRESS option to recompress Crinkler-compressed
executables, optionally with different parameters.
/FIX removed, as it is subsumed by /RECOMPRESS.
14.01.09: 1.1a: Fixed /TRUNCATEFLOATS crashing in some cases.
Improved /ORDERTRIES estimation when call transform is used.
Sometimes sections were misplaced in the HTML report.
Various improvements to the HTML report.
The /FIX option can input and output to the same file.
Helpful error messages for various unsupported features.
Prefer a custom entry point to a standard library one.
New section in the manual about runtime libraries.
12.01.08: 1.1: Support for weak externals (virtual C++ destructors).
Fixed compatibility with Data Execution Prevention.
/REPORT option for a colorful HTML compression report.
/TRUNCATEFLOATS option to mutilate float constants.
/SAFEIMPORT is now default, disabled with /UNSAFEIMPORT.
Slightly smaller overhead if range importing is not used.
Fixed some problems with compressing very small files.
/VERBOSE:FUNCTIONS removed, as it is subsumed by /REPORT.
Remaining /VERBOSE options renamed to /PRINT.
Maximum number of ORDERTRIES increased to 100000.
07.01.07: 1.0a: New /VERBOSE:FUNCTIONS options to sort the functions.
Various verbose output fixes.
Various crash fixes.
A fix to the /FIX Crinkler version recognizer.
27.12.06: 1.0: Output EXE files are now Windows Vista compatible.
Compression tweak for greatly improved compression ratio.
Much faster compression.
Automatically takes advantage of multiple processors.
Improved Visual Studio 2005 integration.
/COMPMODE:INSTANT option for very quick compression.
/ORDERTRIES option to try out different section orderings.
/SAFEIMPORT option to insert a check for nonexistent DLLs.
/PROGRESSGUI option for a graphical progress bar.
/REPLACEDLL option to replace one DLL with another.
/FIX option to fix compatibility problems of older versions.
09.02.06: 0.4a: Fixed linker crash problem with blank member entries
in some library files (such as glut32).
The /PRIORITY option was not mentioned in the
commandline usage help.
18.12.05: 0.4: Changed header and import code to make output EXE files
compatible with 64-bit versions of Windows.
Fixed a bug in the ordinal range import mechanism.
Added a switch to control the process priority.
Added a warning for range import of an unused DLL.
Some more header squeezing.
31.10.05: 0.3: Output EXE files are now Windows 2000 compatible.
Added a number of verbose options to output useful
information about the program being compressed.
Added an option for transforming function calls to
use absolute offsets to improve compression.
Fixed a bug in the linker regarding identically named
sections.
Fixed a potential crash bug in the linker.
Various small tweaks and optimizations.
23.07.05: 0.2: Fixed bug in the decompressor.
Changed the behaviour of the /CRINKLER option.
Added timing to the progress bars.
Some updates to the manual and usage description.
21.07.05: 0.1: First release.
BACKGROUND
----------
Ever since the concept of size-limited demo competitions was
introduced in the early 1990's (and before that as well), people have
been using executable file compressors to reduce the size of their
final executables. An executable file compressor is a program that
takes as input an executable file and produces a new executable file
which has the same behaviour as the original one but is (hopefully)
smaller.
The usual technique employed by executable file compressors is to
compress the contents of the executable file using some general
purpose data compression method and prepend to this compressed data a
small piece of code (the decompressor) which decompresses the contents
into memory in such a way that it looks to the code as if the original
executable file had been loaded into memory in the normal way.
The size of the decompressor is usually around a few hundred bytes,
depending on the complexity of the compression method. This
constitutes an unavoidable overhead in the compressed file, which is
particularly evident for small files, such as 4k intros. Furthermore,
the header of the Windows EXE file format contains a lot of
information that needs to be there at fixed offsets in order for
Windows to be able to load the file. The presence of these overheads
from the header and decompressor motivated people to look for other
means of compressing their 4k intros.
Until Crinkler came around, the most popular strategy for compressing
4k intros for Windows was CAB dropping: A few simple transformations
are performed on the executable to make it compress better (such as
merging sections and setting unused header fields to zero), and the
result is compressed using the Cabinet Compression tool included with
Windows. The resulting .CAB file is renamed to have .BAT extension,
and some commands are inserted into the file such that when the .BAT
file is executed, it decompresses the executable to disk (using the
Cabinet decompression command), runs the executable and then deletes
the executable again. This saves the size of the decompression code
(since an external program is used to do the decompression) and some
of the size of the header (since the header can be compressed).
Various dropping strategies combined with other space-saving hacks
people employed on their 4k intros (in particular import by ordinal)
caused severe compatibility problems. More often than not, people
who wanted to run a newly released 4k intro found that it did not
work on their own machine. It became customary to include a
'compatible' version in the distribution which was larger than 4k
but worked on all machines. For a time, it seemed that the term
'4k intro' meant '4k on the compo machine' intro.
The main motivation for starting the Crinkler project was the feeling
that the existing means available for compressing 4k intros were
unsatisfactory. We want 4k intros that are self-contained EXE
files. We want 4k intros that are 4 kilobytes in size. Our aim for
Crinkler is to be the cleanest, most effective and most compatible
executable file compressor for Windows 4k intros.
COMPATIBILITY
-------------
The goal of Crinkler is for the produced EXE files to be compatible
with all widely used Windows versions and configurations. As of
version 1.4, the EXE files produced by Crinkler are, to the best of
our knowledge, compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
and Windows 8, both 32 bit and 64 bit versions. They are compatible
with Data Execution Prevention and with execution hooks that inspect
the import or export table of launched executables (graphics drivers
are known to do this).
It is not a primary goal of Crinkler to anticipate incompatibilities
that may arise in the future as a consequence of new Windows versions,
graphics drivers or other widespread system changes. Guaranteeing such
compatibility would require Crinkler to follow the EXE file format
specification to the letter, precluding most of the header hacks that
Crinkler utilizes in order to reduce the size overhead of the EXE
format as much as possible. Rather, we strive to continually monitor
the compatibility situation and release a new, fixed version of
Crinkler whenever a situation arises that affects the compatibility
severely (such as a new, incompatible version of Windows). This has
occurred several times already throughout the history of Crinkler.
Each new version of Crinkler not only produces executables that are
compatible with the current majority of targeted systems. It also
includes a way of fixing old Crinkler executables to have the same
level of compatibility. See the section on recompression for more
details on this feature.
This compatibility strategy ensures that intros made using Crinkler
will continue to be accessible to their audience, even if the Windows
EXE loader changes in an incompatible way that could not be
anticipated at the time the intro was produced.
INTRODUCTION
------------
Crinkler is a different approach to executable file compression. While
an ordinary executable file compressor operates on the executable file
produced by the linker from object files, Crinkler replaces the linker
by a combined linker and compressor. The result is an EXE file which
does not do any kind of dropping. It decompresses into memory like a
traditional executable file compressor.
Crinkler employs a range of techniques to reduce the size of the
resulting EXE file beyond what is usually obtained by using CAB
compression:
- Having control over the linking step gives much more flexibility in
the optimizations and transformations possible on the data before
and after compression.
- The compression technique used by Crinkler is based on context
modelling, which is far superior in compression ratio to the LZ
variants used by CAB and most other compressors. The disadvantage of
context modelling is that it is extremely slow, but this is of
little importance when only 4 kilobytes need to be compressed. It
also needs quite a lot of memory for decompression, but this is
again not a problem, since the typical 4k intro uses a lot of memory
anyway.
- The actual compression algorithm performs many passes over the data
in order to optimize the internal parameters of the compressor. This
results in slower compression, but this is usually a reasonable
price to pay for the extra bytes gained on the file size.
- The contents of the executable are split into two parts - a code
part and a data part - and each of these are compressed
individually. This leads to better compression, as code and data are
usually very different in structure and so do not benefit from being
compressed together.
- DLL functions are imported by hash code. This is robust to
structural changes to the DLL between different versions while being
quite compact - only 4 bytes per imported function. For DLLs with
fixed relative ordinals (such as opengl32), a special technique,
ordinal range import, can be used to further reduce the number of
hash codes needed.
- Much of the data in the EXE header is actually ignored by the EXE
loader. This space is used for some of the decompression code.
Using Crinkler is somewhat different from using an ordinary executable
file compressor because of the linking step. In the following
sections, we describe its use in detail.
INSTALLATION
------------
To use as a stand-alone linker, Crinkler does not need any
installation. Simply run crinkler.exe from the commandline with
appropriate arguments, as described in the next section.
However, if you are using Microsoft Visual Studio to develop your
intro, the easiest way to use Crinkler is to run it in place of the
normal Visual Studio linker. Crinkler has been designed as a drop-in
replacement of the Visual Studio linker, supporting the same basic
options. All of the options can then be set using the Visual Studio
configuration window.
Unfortunately, Visual Studio does not (as of this writing) support
replacing its linker by a different one. So what you have to do to
make Visual Studio use Crinkler for linking is the following:
- Copy crinkler.exe to your project directory or to some other
directory of your choice and rename it to link.exe. If you are using
some other linker with a different name, such as the one used with
the Intel C++ compiler, call it whatever the name of the linker is.
- For Visual Studio 2008 and older, select Tools/Options... and go to
Projects and Solutions/VC++ Directories. For Visual Studio 2010 or
newer, open a project, select View/Property Manager, expand a project
and a configuration, double click on Microsoft.Cpp.Win32.user and go
to Common Properties/VC++ Directories.
- At the top of the list for Executable files, add the directory where
you placed Crinkler named link.exe, or add $(SolutionDir) to make it
search in the project directory.
- In the Release configuration (or whichever configuration you want to
enable compression), under Linker/Command Line/Additional Options,
type in /CRINKLER, along with any other Crinkler options you want to
set. See the next section for more details on options. Also set
Linker/Manifest File/Generate Manifest to No and
C/C++/Optimization/Whole Program Optimization to No.
If you have Visual Studio installed but want to run Crinkler from the
commandline, the easiest way is to use the Visual Studio Command
Prompt (available from the Start menu), since this sets up the LIB
environment variable correctly. You can read off the value of the
environment variables by running the 'set' command in this command
prompt. If you are using a different command prompt, you will have to
set up the LIB environment variable manually, or use the /LIBPATH
option.
USAGE
-----
The general form of the command line for Crinkler is:
CRINKLER [options] [object files] [library files] [@commandfile]
When running from within Visual Studio, the object files will be the
ones generated from the sources in the project. The library files will
be the standard set of Win32 libraries, plus any additional library
files specified under Linker/Input/Additional Dependencies. If you are
using a standard runtime library, such as msvcrt, you will have to
specify this one manually. See the section on standard libraries for
more information.
The following options are compatible with the VS linker and can be set
using switches in the Visual Studio configuration window:
/SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE
/SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS
(Linker/System/SubSystem)
Specify the Windows subsystem to use. If the subsystem is CONSOLE,
a console window will be opened when the program starts. The
subsystem also determines the name of the default entry point (see
/ENTRY). The default subsystem is WINDOWS.
/LARGEADDRESSAWARE
/LARGEADDRESSAWARE:NO
(Linker/System/Enable Large Addresses)
Specify whether the executable is able to handle addresses above
2 gigabytes. If this option is enabled, the executable will be able
to allocate close to 4 gigabytes of memory.
/OUT:[file]
(Linker/General/Output File)
Specify the name of the resulting executable file. The default
name is out.exe.
/ENTRY:[symbol]
(Linker/Advanced/Entry Point)
Specify the entry label in the code. The default entry label is
mainCRTStartup for CONSOLE subsystem applications and
WinMainCRTStartup for WINDOWS subsystem applications.
/LIBPATH:[path]
(Linker/General/Additional Library Directories)
Add a number of directories (separated by semicolons) to the ones
searched for library files. If a library is not found in any of
these, the directories mentioned in the LIB environment variable
are searched.
@commandfile
Commandline arguments will be read from the given file, as if they
were given directly on the commandline.
In addition to the above options, a number of options can be given to
control the compression process. These can be specified under
Linker/Command Line/Additional Options:
/CRINKLER
Enable the Crinkler compressor. If this option is disabled,
Crinkler will search through the path for a command with the same
name as itself, skipping itself, and pass all arguments on to this
command instead. This will normally invoke the Visual Studio
linker. If the name of the Crinkler executable is crinkler.exe,
this option is enabled by default, otherwise it is disabled by
default.
/RECOMPRESS
Decompress a Crinkler-compressed executable and recompress it
using the given options. The resulting executable will have the
same level of compatibility as one produced directly by the
current version of Crinkler. See the section on compatibility for
more information on the compatibility of Crinkler-produced
executables.
When this option is specified, Crinkler takes a single file
argument, which must be an EXE file produced by Crinkler 0.4 or
newer.
See the section on recompression below for a description of the
options that can be given to control the decompression process.
/PRIORITY:IDLE
/PRIORITY:BELOWNORMAL
/PRIORITY:NORMAL
Select the process priority at which Crinkler will run while
compressing. The default priority is BELOWNORMAL. Use IDLE if you
want Crinkler to disturb you as little as possible. Use NORMAL if
you don't need your machine for anything else while compressing.
/COMPMODE:INSTANT
/COMPMODE:FAST
/COMPMODE:SLOW
Choose between three different compression modes. The FAST mode
usually compresses in a couple of seconds, while the SLOW one can
take up to a few minutes to complete. The slow one usually
compresses about 10-40 bytes better on a 4k executable. Use
INSTANT if you just want to check that your program works in
compressed form and don't care about the size. The default
compression mode is FAST.
/HASHSIZE:[memory size]
Specify the amount of memory the decompressor is allowed to use
while decompressing, in megabytes. In general, the more memory the
decompressor is allowed to use, the better the compression ratio
will be, though only slightly. The memory requirements of the
final executable (the size of the executable image when loaded
into memory) will be the maximum of this value and the original
image size. The memory will not be deallocated until the program
terminates, and any heap allocation the program performs will add
to this memory usage. The default value is 100, which is usually a
good compromise.
/HASHTRIES:[number of retries]
Specify the number of different hash table sizes the compressor
will try in order to find one with few collisions. More tries lead
to longer compression time but slightly better compression. The
default value is 20. Higher values rarely improve the size by more
than a few bytes.
/ORDERTRIES:[number of retries]
Specify the number of section reordering iterations that the
linker will try out in search for the ordering that gives the best
compression ratio. The default is not to do any reordering.
Specifying this option drastically increases the compression time,
since Crinkler has to calculate the compressed size anew on every
reordering. Usually, the size does not improve noticeably after a
few thousand iterations.
/RANGE:[DLL name]
Import functions from the given DLL (without the .dll suffix)
using ordinal range import. Ordinal range import imports the first
used function by hash and the rest by ordinal relative to the
first one. Ordinal range import is safe to use on DLLs in which
the ordinals are fixed relative to each other, such as opengl32 or
d3dx9_??. This option can be specified multiple times, for
different DLLs.
/REPLACEDLL:[oldDLL=newDLL]
Whenever a function is imported from oldDLL, import it from newDLL
instead. DLL replacement is useful when the end user might not
have the version of the DLL that you are linking to. A typical use
is to replace one version of d3dx9_?? by another. Only use this
option if you know that the two DLLs are compatible. When
REPLACEDLL and RANGE are used together, RANGE must refer to the
new DLL.
/UNSAFEIMPORT
If the executable fails to load some DLL, it will normally pop up
a message box with the DLL name. This option disables this check
to save a few bytes (usually around 20). With unsafe import, the
executable will crash if a needed DLL is not found.
/TRANSFORM:CALLS
Change the relative jump offsets in all internal call instructions
(E8 opcode) into absolute offsets from the start of the code. This
usually improves compression, since multiple calls to the same
function become identical. The transformation has an overhead of
about 20 bytes for the detransformation code, but the net savings
on a full 4k can be as large as 50 bytes, depending on the number
of calls in your code.
/NOINITIALIZERS
Disable the inclusion of dynamic C++ initializers. The default is
to insert calls to each of the initializers just before the entry
point.
/TRUNCATEFLOATS:[number of bits]
Floating point constants can take up a significant amount of space
in an intro, and often much of this space is wasted because the
constants have more precision than needed. Typically, many bytes
can be saved by rounding floating point constants to "nice" values
- that is, values where many bits in the mantissa are zero.
However, such rounding is cumbersome, especially when the
constants are written in decimal notation.
The purpose of the /TRUNCATEFLOATS option is to automate this
rounding process. When this option is given, Crinkler tries to
identify float and double constants and round them to the number
of bits given (between 1 and 64). If no number is given, 64 is
assumed.
Typically, object files do not contain any information about what
data is floating point constants and what is not (though the file
format does support such information). This means that in order to
identify floating point constants, Crinkler has to resort to
heuristics based on label names. These heuristics are able to
recognize constants in code and some variables, but far from all.
You can tell Crinkler explicitly that some variable contains float
data and how much it should be truncated by having the variable
name (or label) start with tf[n]_ where [n] is the number of bits
to truncate the constants to. The number of bits can be omitted,
in which case the number of bits given in the argument to
/TRUNCATEFLOATS is used. Such variables will still only be
truncated if the /TRUNCATEFLOATS option is given. Example:
const float tf14_positions[] = { 0.1f, 0.35f, 0.25f };
This will truncate the constants in the table to 14 bits (5 bits
of mantissa), resulting in the values 0.099609375, 0.3515625 and
0.25, respectively. Tip: rather than changing the variable name
and all references to it each time you want to change the
truncation precision, use a define:
#define positions tf14_positions
Note that /TRUNCATEFLOATS is an unstable and highly experimental
feature. Make sure to test the compressed file to verify that the
result is acceptable. Remember to include the musician in this
verification process. :)
/OVERRIDEALIGNMENTS:[bits of alignment]
It is often possible to improve compression by placing
uninitialized variables at addresses divisible by high powers of
two, since this will cause all references to these addresses to
contain more zeros.
The PE file format only supports up to 13 bits of alignment
(8192), and some tools do not even expose this support fully (for
instance, Nasm only supports alignments up to 64). Usually, much
higher alignments are desirable.
Crinkler supports explicit alignment of labels at up to one
gigabyte (30 bits). When you specify the /OVERRIDEALIGNMENTS
option, Crinkler will look for labels containing the string
align[n] where [n] is the number of bits of alignment desired
(e.g. 8 for 256-byte alignment). It will then align the section
containing that label such that the label address is divisible by
2^[n]. The label does not have to be at the beginning of the
section, but there can be at most one explicitly aligned label in
each section.
The alignment specifier can optionally include an alignment
offset, specified by the string align[n]_[m] where [n] is the
number of bits of alignment and [m] is the offset in bytes. This
will place the label [m] bytes after an aligned address, i.e. such
that the address minus [m] is divisible by 2^[n].
If a numerical argument is given to /OVERRIDEALIGNMENTS, all
uninitialized sections which do not contain an explicitly aligned
label will be aligned to the given number of bits (if larger than
their original alignment). If the option is specified without
argument, uninitialized sections which do not contain an
explicitly aligned label will be aligned as specified in the
object file, as normally.
A convenient way to specify explicit alignments in C++ code is in
a header file included by all files in the project, containing
definitions like this:
#define MusicBuffer MusicBuffer_align24
In assembler files, alignments can be specified as local labels:
MusicBuffer:
.align24
; buffer space here
Explicit alignment can be used on code and data sections as well,
except for the section containing the entry point, which will
always be 1-byte aligned. The space between the sections will be
padded with zero bytes.
Finally, Crinkler has a number of options for controlling the output
during compression. Just like the other options, these can be
specified under Linker/Command Line/Additional Options:
/REPORT:[HTML file name]
Write an HTML file with a detailed, colorful, interactive report
on the compression result. The code section will be shown as hex
dump and disassembly of the code, and the data section will be
shown as hex and ascii dump. All bytes will be colored to show how
much that byte was compressed. This report can be useful in
determining which parts of the executable take up the most space
and which things to change to reduce the size.
/PRINT:LABELS
Print a list of all labels in the program along with uncompressed
and compressed sizes for the data between the labels. This is a
stripped down version of the information provided by the /REPORT
option.
/PRINT:IMPORTS
List all functions imported from DLLs. The functions are grouped
by DLL, and functions imported by ordinal range import are grouped
into ranges.
/PRINT:MODELS
List the model masks and weights selected by the compressor. This
is mostly for internal use.
/PROGRESSGUI
Open a window showing a graphical progress indicator.
An example commandline for linking and compressing an intro could look
like this (split on multiple lines for readability):
crinkler.exe /OUT:micropolis.exe /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS /RANGE:opengl32
/COMPMODE:SLOW /ORDERTRIES:1000 /PRINT:IMPORTS /PRINT:LABELS
kernel32.lib user32.lib gdi32.lib opengl32.lib glu32.lib winmm.lib
micropolis\startup.obj micropolis\render.obj
micropolis\render-asm.obj micropolis\sound.obj
micropolis\sound-asm.obj
RECOMPRESSION
-------------
A new feature in Crinkler 1.2 is the abillity to recompress an already
Crinkler-compressed executable. The main purpose for the feature is to
patch an executable compressed using an earlier version of Crinkler so
that it runs on recent Windows versions. But it can also be used
more generally to change some of the compression parameters of a
compressed program without performing the whole linking and
compression process from scratch and without access to the original
object files. Particularly, if your output executable after a long
time spent compressing is just a few bytes too big due to bytes lost
to hashing, you can recompress the output executable, specifying a
higher value for /HASHSIZE and/or /HASHTRIES, and thus avoid running
through the whole compression process again.
Recompression mode is activated by the /RECOMPRESS option. When this
option is specified, Crinkler takes a single file argument, which must
be an EXE file produced by Crinkler 0.4 or newer. Most options then
take on slightly different meanings, as described here.
The /CRINKLER, /PRIORITY, @commandfile and /PROGRESSGUI options work
as normally. The /ENTRY, /LIBPATH, /ORDERTRIES, /RANGE, /REPLACEDLL,
/UNSAFEIMPORT, /TRANSFORM:CALLS, /NOINITIALIZERS, /TRUNCATEFLOATS and
/OVERRIDEALIGNMENTS options are ignored, as the parameters specified
by these options cannot be changed via recompression. The /PRINT options
are also ignored. The remaining options work as follows:
/SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE
/SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS
If this option is given, it specifies the Windows subsystem to use
as normally. If it is omitted, the original subsystem will be
used.
/LARGEADDRESSAWARE
/LARGEADDRESSAWARE:NO
If this option is given, it specifies large address awareness of the
executable as normally. If it is omitted, the original large address
awareness will be used.
/OUT:[file]
Specify the name of the resulting executable file. The default is
to overwrite the input file.
/COMPMODE:INSTANT
/COMPMODE:FAST
/COMPMODE:SLOW
If this option is specified, the compression models will be
reestimated using the specified compression mode. If the option is
omitted, the models used for the original compression will be used
for the recompression, and no model estimation will be performed.
If the executable was originally produced by Crinkler 1.0 or
newer, this will typically yield a compression ratio similar to
the original compression.
/HASHSIZE:[memory size]
If neither this option nor a compression mode is specified, the
original, optimized hash size will be used. Recompression speed
will be similar to INSTANT compression mode in this case.
If a compression mode is specified but this option is omitted,
hash size optimization will be performed using the hash size
specified for the original file.
If this option is given, hash size optimization takes place
normally, using the specified maximum size.
/HASHTRIES:[number of retries]
If hash size optimization takes place, this option specifies the
number of tries as normally. Otherwise it is ignored.
/REPORT:[HTML file name]
Writes out an HTML file as normally. Since no symbol information
is available, this will be a plain disassembly/hex dump without
labels or cross-linking.
STANDARD RUNTIME LIBRARIES
--------------------------
Under normal circumstances, the Visual Studio compiler generates code
that requires a C runtime library containing standard C functions and
various support functions. These functions can either be linked in
statically (included into the executable) or dynamically via a runtime
DLL. For size-sensitive applications, you should always link
dynamically, which is achieved by setting C/C++/Code
Generation/Runtime Library to Multi-threaded DLL (/MD).
Note however, that the standard runtime libraries for Visual Studio
2005 or newer will not work with Crinkler-compressed executables,
since these runtime libraries require a manifest in the executable,
and Crinkler does not support manifests. Furthermore, these DLLs are
not present by default on Windows installations, so you will usually
not want your program to be dependent on them.
To work around this, link to the Visual Studio 6 runtime library -
msvcrt.dll - which is distributed with all Windows versions. This is
done by using the Visual Studio 6 version of msvcrt.lib, which can be
obtained thus:
- Download Service Pack 6 for Visual Studio 6.0 at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa718364.aspx
- Place the downloaded self-extractor in an empty directory and run
it, or open it using an archive tool such as WinRAR.
- Open the VS6sp61.cab file and go to the vc98\lib directory. There
you will find the msvcrt.lib file.
- Rename this file to something else (such as msvcrt_old.lib) and
place it in your project directory.
- Add msvcrt_old.lib to the list of libraries to link to at
Linker/Input/Additional Dependencies.
There are a couple of caveats to using an older runtime library than
the compiler expects, though. With out-of-the-box compilation
options, the Visual Studio compiler generates code that requires some
support functions which are only present in newer runtime DLLs. To
avoid these dependencies, set the following options under C/C++/Code
Generation:
- Basic Runtime Checks: Default
- Buffer Security Check: No (/GS-)
Also, do not use C++ exception handling in your code. And do not use
STL classes, since they use exceptions all over.
Finally, even when using the DLL-based runtime, not all support code
is linked dynamically. The runtime library contains an entry function
which is included into the executable and takes care of things like
parsing the commandline and executing dynamic initializers. The entry
function then calls the main function.
The standard entry function is around half a kilobyte in size and is
usually not needed for intro code to function properly. To avoid this
overhead, define your own entry function, either by defining a
function called mainCRTStartup or WinMainCRTStartup (depending on
which Windows subsystem you use) or by using the /ENTRY option.
The best strategy is of course to avoid linking to a runtime DLL at
all, assuming you can do without the functions provided by the
standard runtime library. This will save the space for importing the
runtime DLL.
To reduce the dependencies on the standard runtime DLL as much as
possible, set the following options:
- C/C++/Optimization/Enable Intrinsic Functions: Yes (/Oi). This will
cause several standard functions (mainly math, string and memory
functions) to generate inline code rather than a function call.
- C/C++/Code Generation/Floating Point Model: Fast (/fp:fast).
- C/C++/Command Line: Add the option /QIfist. This will cause
conversions from floating point to integer to use the FIST
instruction rather than calling a conversion function. Note that
this changes the semantics of conversions from truncation to
round-to-nearest (unless you explicitly change the rounding mode of
the FPU). On the other hand, it will also give a considerable speed
boost.
RECOMMENDATIONS
---------------
There are a number of things you can do as intro programmer to boost
the compression achieved by Crinkler even further. This section
gives some advice on these.
- Since much of the effectiveness of Crinkler comes from separating
code and data into different parts of the file and compressing each
part individually, it is important that this separation is
possible. Mark your code and data sections as containing code and
data, respectively, and do not put both code and data into the same
section. See your assembler manual for information about how to do
this. For instance, in Nasm, you can write the keyword "text" or
"data" after the section name and give sections different names to
prevent them from being merged by the assembler.
- Split both your code and your data into as many sections as
possible. This gives Crinkler more opportunities to select the
ordering of the sections to optimize the compression ratio.
- If you are using OpenGL, try using ordinal range import for
opengl32. If you are using Direct3D, try using ordinal range import
for d3dx9_??. This may reduce the space needed for function hash
codes.
- If you are only importing functions from DLLs which are present on
all Windows systems (d3dx9_?? is not), you can "safely" use the
/UNSAFEIMPORT option. Run Crinkler with the /PRINT:IMPORTS option
to check which DLLs you are importing from.
- Avoid large blocks of data, even if they are all zero. Use
uninitialized (bss) sections instead. Crinkler does not cope well
with large amounts of data. Be aware that the compressor may use an
amount of memory up to about 4000 times the uncompressed code/data
size (whichever is largest).
- When you perform detailed size comparisons, always use the SLOW
compression mode with plenty of ORDERTRIES and compare the
"Reestimated ideal compressed total size" values. The INSTANT and
FAST modes are only intended for use during testing and to give a
rough estimate of the compressed size. Also note that the
compression is tuned for the 4k size target, so any size comparisons
you perform on smaller files might turn out to behave differently
when you get nearer to 4k.
- As a matter of good conduct, do not use UNSAFEIMPORT if you can
spare the space, and do not set HASHSIZE higher than you need. In
other words, if your final intro is well below the size limit,
remove the UNSAFEIMPORT option (if you added it in the first place)
and then lower HASHSIZE in order not to waste memory unnecessarily.
COMMON PROBLEMS, KNOWN BUGS AND LIMITATIONS
-------------------------------------------
Any DLL that is needed by a program that Crinkler compresses must be
available to Crinkler itself. If you get the error message 'Could not
open DLL ...', it means that Crinkler needed the DLL but could not
find it. You must place it either in the same directory as the
Crinkler executable or somewhere in the DLL path, such as
C:\WINDOWS\system32. Alternatively, you can use the REPLACEDLL option
to replace it by one that is available. If you get this message for
msvcr?? DLLs, you have a dependency on the runtime DLL you need to get
rid of. See the section on standard libraries.
If you launch your Crinkler-compressed program from within Visual
Studio, use Start Without Debugging (Ctrl+F5) rather than Start
Debugging (F5). The debugger cannot handle Crinkler-compressed
executables. If the program crashes, you can still attach the debugger
in the normal way.
When running inside Visual Studio, the textual progress bars are not
updated correctly, since the Visual Studio console does not flush the
output until a newline is reached, even when explicitly flushed by the
running program. Use the /PROGRESSGUI option to get a graphical
progress bar.
The code for parsing object and library files contains only a minimum
of sanity checks. If you pass a corrupt file to Crinkler, it will most
likely crash.
The final compressed size must be less than 128k, or Crinkler will fail
horribly. You shouldn't use it for such big files anyway.
SUPPORT
-------
Try out Crinkler, and let us know what you think about it. If you have
any problems, comments or suggestions, please write a message at the
Pouet.net forum:
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=18158
If you want to contact us directly, e.g. for sending us a file, write
to authors@crinkler.net.
If Crinkler crashes, it will write two dump files named
dump<n>_mini.dmp and dump<n>_full.dmp, where <n> is an integer making
the file name unique. These files contain information about the
execution state of Crinkler at the time of the crash. When reporting a
crash, please include at least the mini dump, or, if possible, both.
The newest released version of Crinkler can always be found at
http://www.crinkler.net.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
----------------
The compression technique used by Crinkler is much inspired by the PAQ
compressor by Matt Mahoney.
The import code is loosely based on the hashed imports code by Peci.
The disassembly feature of the compression report uses the diStorm
disassembler library by Gil Dabah.
Many thanks to all the people who have given us comments, bug reports
and test material, in particular to Rambo, Kusma, Polaris, Gargaj,
Frenetic, Buzzie, Shash, Auld, Minas, Skarab, Dwing, Freak5, Hunta,
Snq, Darkblade, Abductee, iq, Las, pirx, Hitchhikr, Gloom, Zephod,
coda, KK, XMunkki, KammutierSpule, acidbrain, xTrim, jix, SubV242,
w23, ryg, shinmai, Decipher, xtrium, TomasRiker, smoothstep, XT95,
NeKoFu, n3Xus, Moerder, merry, RCL, zoom, vampire7, Key-Real,
quiller, and all the ones we have forgotten. Also thanks to Dwarf,
Polygon7 and Gargaj for suggestions for our web design.
Big thanks to Rrrola for his valuable suggestions for optimizing the
decompression code, and to qkumba for his guidance on the zero-section
header and for tracking down the NVIDIA driver issue.
Our special thanks to the many people who have demonstrated the
usefulness of Crinkler by using it for their own productions.
Keep it going! We greatly appreciate your feedback.