From: "Andy Allred [MS]" <
[email protected]>
Subject: Re: XPe SP2 bloat
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 07:51:37 -0700
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.embedded
Roger, checking the archives will answer some of your questions. I'm not
going to get into a debate with folks that don't read the docs and can't
supply specific information, general complaints don't enable me to provide
you answers or to target specific features for more work, if you're just
wanting to blow off steam then please say this so I can invest my time more
efficiently.
An example of a discoverable issue of yours is that a 16MB swap file is not
needed. What's needed is at least a Maximum 2 MB swap file for the perf
counters, and that is a *bug* not a functional requirement per the feature
specification so the Perf counters folks are fixing that bug in a future
release.
As for 'unwinding the dependencies', let's be clear that with very few
exceptions (like Minlogon and NTLDR), XPe uses the same binaries as XP Pro.
This means that if to effect security changes in Pro SP2 a feature needs to
introduce a dependency that was not there for SP1 or Gold, then we also have
the same dependency. Where the embedded team can come in and assist is
identifying *optional* dependency feature teams have introduced and expose
those in the configurable UI of the component. Simply unchecking the box in
the config ui for those can have dramatic effect on the footprint (and
behavior) of the feature. We also monitor features that comprise the main
features of the most popular device categories and negotiate with those
feature teams to think of the embedded customer's requirements when they are
making functional changes.
I encourage you to read the documentation and peruse the newsgroup archives
and then ask specific questions (like the perf counters deal) if you
honestly feel a dependency is weird. Otherwise there's not much I can do to
answer general questions like 'my footprint is too big' without details.
With those details you can now search the archives, if the question isn't
answered there then ask it here or file a bug via the WECRT @Microsoft.com
alias so I know someone is actually interested in using Telnet Server for
instance in a minimal system.
I'm not going to continue this thread however feel free to pile on here,
I'll monitor it but not respond. But if you have specifics then please start
new threads or file a bug, it goes right to my inbox.
Thanks
Andy
--
Embedded team blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/embedded/
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Roger H. Levy said:
I think Andy has dodged the issue. My SP1 image was about the same size as
Larry's (50-60M, which I think is huge relative to what I need it to do)
but
even after removing the firewall from SP2, the image grew by 20-25M. The
real issue, I think, is the terrible job TD does in resolving
dependencies.
My image is bloated because it contains many DLLs and components that have
nothing to do with my application and which will never be used but they
are
pulled in because there was inadequate effort by MS in unwinding the
dependencies. If you haven't seen this, try taking a small minlogin,
command shell system and then include a telnet server and watch your image
size nearly double. Another perverse example is the need for me to have a
16M swap file because performance statistics depend on it. This got more
bizarre when I moved to ram-reg ewf on flash and found out that it's
unhealthy to have a swap file. What am I supposed to do with those two
facts?
RL
