retawq Documentation
Compile-Time Configuration Options

Introduction

For configuring retawq before building the program ("compile-time configuration"), both a "classical" Makefile and a more modern/portable configure script are supported.

The Options

Minimizing retawq's Size

retawq is already a quite small browser. If you want to make the executable program still smaller, e.g. as a tool for a boot/rescue disk or a "whole system on one floppy disk" collection, this section shows how to shrink retawq's size by disabling "all" compile-time options, including some internal options which aren't documented elsewhere. If you actually need a feature, you should leave the respective option enabled, of course. The minimization is shown with the configure script here; you can get the same result by editing the "classical" Makefile manually.

As a starting point, disable all officially documented options which are enabled by default: "./configure --disable-textmodemouse --disable-news --disable-cookies --set-ced=0". You could additionally use "--set-tg=curses" (if that works for you) to disable some ncurses-specific code.

Now for the "dirty" part: open the file ".config" (which was generated by the configure script) in a text editor, and do any or all of the following; in parentheses: effect of the change.

Finally, say "make" to build the program. Let's have a look at the resulting size, for example when building version 0.2.0 on the x86 platform, Linux kernel 2.2.x, libc GNU glibc 2.2.x, compiler GNU gcc 2.7.2.3:

On my computer, minimal retawq is much smaller than the file viewer "less" (which has about 90 KB after running "strip --strip-unneeded less"), so you might even consider removing "less" from your "whole system on one floppy disk" collection and doing something like "ln -s retawq less". Funny, isn't it?

You can reduce the "total" size even further by changing OPTION_THREADING so that no pthreads library is necessary...


This documentation file is part of version 0.2.4 of retawq, a network client created by Arne Thomaßen. retawq is basically released under certain versions of the GNU General Public License and WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. Copyright (C) 2001-2004 Arne Thomaßen.