How to reduce the size of an executable file?

[msu7xi]

Hello,

I have modified the central_uart example to make the nRF52832 communicate with an ESP32 in MessagePack. After having disabled the logger configuration in the proj.conf file the size of the *.bin file is 225.8 kB which is too large for an nRF52805 (flash of 192 kB). Is there any way to reduce the bin file size?

Below the proj.conf file:

#
# Copyright (c) 2018 Nordic Semiconductor
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: LicenseRef-Nordic-5-Clause
#

# Enable the UART driver
CONFIG_UART_ASYNC_API=y
CONFIG_NRFX_UARTE0=y
CONFIG_SERIAL=y
CONFIG_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_UART_CONSOLE=y

# Enable the BLE stack with GATT Client configuration
CONFIG_BT=y
CONFIG_BT_CENTRAL=y
CONFIG_BT_SMP=y
CONFIG_BT_GATT_CLIENT=y

# Enable the BLE modules from NCS
CONFIG_BT_NUS_CLIENT=y
CONFIG_BT_SCAN=y
CONFIG_BT_SCAN_FILTER_ENABLE=y
CONFIG_BT_SCAN_UUID_CNT=1
CONFIG_BT_SCAN_ADDRESS_CNT=1
CONFIG_BT_GATT_DM=y
CONFIG_HEAP_MEM_POOL_SIZE=2048
CONFIG_BT_MAX_PAIRED=1
CONFIG_BT_MAX_CONN=1

# This example requires more workqueue stack
CONFIG_SYSTEM_WORKQUEUE_STACK_SIZE=2048

# Enable bonding
CONFIG_BT_SETTINGS=y
CONFIG_FLASH=y
CONFIG_FLASH_PAGE_LAYOUT=y
CONFIG_FLASH_MAP=y
CONFIG_NVS=y
CONFIG_SETTINGS=y

# Enable use of the non-minimal C functionality (stdio.h).
CONFIG_NEWLIB_LIBC=y

# Config logger
CONFIG_LOG=n
CONFIG_USE_SEGGER_RTT=y
CONFIG_LOG_BACKEND_RTT=n
CONFIG_LOG_BACKEND_UART=n
CONFIG_LOG_PRINTK=n
CONFIG_BT_DEBUG_LOG=n
CONFIG_BT_GATT_DM_DATA_PRINT=n

CONFIG_ASSERT=y

# Config I2C
CONFIG_GPIO=y
CONFIG_I2C=y
CONFIG_I2C_NRFX=y

CONFIG_SHELL=y
CONFIG_I2C_SHELL=y

Regards,

Marco

[JamesDougherty]

Hey Marco,

Just curious, have you tried using CONFIG_SIZE_OPTIMIZATIONS=y so GCC optimizes for size? That may work. Also, have you tried using the minimal C library (CONFIG_MINIMAL_LIBC=y) instead of Newlib (CONFIG_NEWLIB_LIBC=y)?

[msu7xi]

Hello James,

Yes, I'm using CONFIG_SIZE_OPTIMIZATIONS=y but I have not tried CONFIG_MINIMAL_LIBC=y yet. Should this be configured in the prj.conf file?

[JamesDougherty]

MemManage Exception. I have a hunch that something is definitely getting called outside of memory bounds. Do you have any callbacks? If so, is there a null one somewhere? It's so hard to tell from the screenshot what that could be though. Are you able to share the source code to this or source code that can reproduce it?

[Learner]

JamesDougherty said:

something is definitely getting called outside of memory bounds.

Not sure what you mean.

JamesDougherty said:

Do you have any callbacks?

Yes, mainly BLE 

JamesDougherty said:

If so, is there a null one somewhere?

What do you mean?

But the last known code address in the call stack prior to the crash is 0x2000440c which corresponds to the address of the inpuBuffer[] I mentioned earlier. You don't think this anything to do with accessing this buffer.

[JamesDougherty]

Read a similar situation here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52234155/what-can-cause-an-arm-memmanage-exception-with-all-bits-in-the-mmsfr-register-ze

I'm heading out for the day, best of luck on your hunt.

[Learner]

Have a great day! 

[Learner]

Good Morning James,

I thought I ought to let you know how it all unfolded ...

It was a silly mistake from my part when I switched from using sscanf() to strtol().  I was calling strtol() with the wrong number of parameters and I was ignoring the compiler warning "Implicit definition of function...". Once I fixed this the problem disappeared.

long strtol(const char *nptr)

instead of 

long strtol(const char *nptr, char **endptr, register int base)

In fact, I am now using atoi() because it is more appropriate in my case.

Morale: Get rid of all warnings first!

Thank you for your help. Have a great day!

Kind regards

Mohamed

[JamesDougherty]

Oh, awesome! So glad to hear you got it going and thank you for letting me know. We have a joke around here about, "So what was the problem?"... "The software was only doing what I told it to do, so it wasn't behaving correctly... stupid thing, it should have known better" lol. 

Have a great day too.