resource sizes with gdk-pixbuf-csource

["Matt Hoosier" <mwhoosier gmail com>]

Hi,

I'd like to use gdk-pixbuf-csource for the usual reasons (to eliminate
runtime file access in an application).

I've noticed that the C arrays created by this, even when compiled to
object code, are much larger (at least for the PNG's I'm trying) than
the original graphic file. For example,

gdk-pixbuf-csource foo.png > foo_png.c
gcc `pkg-config --cflags gtk+-2.0` -c foo_png_harness.c

The C file which actually gets compiled above does nothing more than
add the right #include statements so that the right datatypes are
declared, then directly include foo_png.c.

The resulting file sizes are:

foo.png: 7856 bytes
foo_png_harness.o: 12993

I've fiddled around with different switches to gdk-pixbuf-csource, but
nothing seem to crack this blowup ratio of about 5:3. Presumably the
inlined resource is a little bigger because some preprocessing has
been done to make the bytewise content of the array more palatable for
use as a GdkPixbuf. Is this just the best I can get, or is there some
more tricky way to make the tool just insert a bytewise copy of the
image file, and let the pixbuf do all decoding at runtime?