[vbox-dev] VBoxGuestAdditions.iso size - optimization possible for v4.0 ?

[Alexey Eromenko]

After digging historical releases, I realized a huge jump is
VBoxGuestAdditions.iso size between VBox v1.6 to v2.0... (from 9 MB to
27MB, triple size !)

Why is this ?

After basic analysis, the answer is divided into two:
1. Adding of 64-bit Guest Additions (valid reason to double size)

2. OS/2 and Linux additions didn't rise very much in sizes.

3. The 32-bit drives for Windows guest now take _much_ more.
VBoxGuest/VBoxSF/VBoxGINA have risen from 700 KB to whole 2.8 MB.
(quadrupling the size !)
I see no valid reason for such kind of change, esp. because there was
no significant improvement of functionality in those components with
v2.0.
The only thing I can think of is bad compiler or compiler options.

If true, we could reverse this change, and shrink our newest
VirtualBox v4.0 release download size by about  5 MB. (nearly 10%)

-- 
-Alexey Eromenko "Technologov"