Compression is an important part of making a portable app. Many users will want the apps to be as small as possible, so they can fit more apps and data on their drives. It will also make it a faster download for the users, as it has a smaller file size.
The tool of choice for compression binaries, like EXE and DLL files, is UPX. The recommended settings for this are
--best --compress-icons=0 --nrv2e --crp-ms=999999 -k
If you are comfortable with using the command line, cd into your App folder and run
for /r %e in (*.exe,*.dll) do upx "%e" --best --compress-icons=0 --nrv2e --crp-ms=999999 -k
A package with UPX and a script is coming soon.
After UPX compressing the files, testing the application out, and everything seems good-to-go, remember to go back and delete the original executable files you “kept” with the ”-k” switch that now have the extension of .ex~ or .dl~.
del /S *.*~
If testing shows that some functionality of the application is lost (it crashes, etc) you can get the original files back with
for /r %%e in (*.exe,*.dll) do upx "%%e" -d
(Please note: this must be done before you delete the files above)
Note: all examples above assume upx.exe is in your PATH.
A self-extracting archive with all the programs & scripts need to compress executables, recompress JAR files, and optimize PNGs is available for download here.