Why is my release exe 32 kb with only 14 lines of code?

[Igor Vartanov]

Debug is much bigger and release is around 32kb. What can be done to get VC2008 style cleanup?

Nothing special, you know. You just spend a few years to learn C++, and magic comes ultimately.

35.cpp here below is your 14 lines. Look what good /MD switch brings in.

D:\Temp\35>cl 35.cpp user32.lib
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.50727.762 for 80x86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

35.cpp
Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 8.00.50727.762
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

/out:35.exe
35.obj
user32.lib

D:\Temp\35>dir
 Volume in drive D is WORK
 Volume Serial Number is 4067-668D

 Directory of D:\Temp\35

02/09/2010  12:45 AM    <DIR>          .
02/09/2010  12:45 AM    <DIR>          ..
02/09/2010  12:45 AM               284 35.cpp
02/09/2010  12:51 AM            45,056 35.exe
02/09/2010  12:45 AM               382 35.exe.manifest
02/09/2010  12:51 AM               803 35.obj
               4 File(s)         46,525 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  37,164,232,704 bytes free

D:\Temp\35>cl 35.cpp /MD user32.lib
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.50727.762 for 80x86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

35.cpp
Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 8.00.50727.762
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

/out:35.exe
35.obj
user32.lib

D:\Temp\35>dir
 Volume in drive D is WORK
 Volume Serial Number is 4067-668D

 Directory of D:\Temp\35

02/09/2010  12:45 AM    <DIR>          .
02/09/2010  12:45 AM    <DIR>          ..
02/09/2010  12:45 AM               284 35.cpp
02/09/2010  12:45 AM             5,632 35.exe
02/09/2010  12:45 AM               382 35.exe.manifest
02/09/2010  12:45 AM               950 35.obj
               4 File(s)          7,248 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  37,164,273,664 bytes free

Only reason I switched to VC6 is because VC2008 required some computers to have MSVC90.dll as a runtime library and is very annoying to the end user to have to install that, so I chose VC6. I wish 2008 had a way to build exe as VC6 does however.

Sure it will, by twelve years afraid though.