[Swfdec] Compiling swfdec

[Peter Carlson]

> > I noticed the compiled swfdec lib is
> > about 5mb.  We only have about 1mb of space or so to work with for
> this
> > feature.  We do not need all the features of flash, just some basic
> display
> > the swf, and receive UI notifications.
> > 1. Approximately how small can swfdec be compiled down to?
> >
> I don;t know anyone who has ever tried to remove features from Swfdec
> by not compiling parts of the code, so I have no idea. In theory it
> shoudln't be that hard to just remove certain files from the source as
> all the Flash objects are usually implemented in a self-contained way,
> but as I said: in practice noone did that yet.
> If you want to save size, adding -DSWFDEC_DISABLE_DEBUG to the CFLAGS
> - before running configure - will certainly help. It removes all
> debugging output. Other options that might save space at the cost of
> debuggability are -DG_DISABLE_CHECKS -DG_DISABLE_ASSERT
> -DG_DISABLE_CAST_CHECKS
> With all of them enabled and -O3 stripped, libswfdec is roughly twice
> as fast and libswfdec-0.9.so takes 892839 bytes here, which is a lot
> less than my 22.5MB for the non-stripped debug enabled libswfdec I
> usually use. ;)
> 
> > 3. Any other recommendations for a super lite flash player?
> >
> You could look at Gnash or older (and therefore less featureful and
> smaller) libswfdec versions, but I have no idea if that buys you
> anything.
> 
> Cheers,
> Benjamin

Ok, have added those flags and it's down to 1.5mb  
I will also be looking at stripping out functionality that might not be
needed.  I've been poking at gnash as well, however it is already about 2x
the size.  

Now just a couple of questions that will show my *nix ignorance and M$
background (24 years of programming and not much in *nix)

1.  Does there happen to be a IDE project file for swfdec?  
2.  what is -03 stripped?
3.  I need a 5 second primer on .la .so .lo and .a  (I know they compare to
.lib, and .dll but I can't remember exactly how)

Thanks for the patience and help!

Peter