TrimTheFat 0.7
Recover space from universal binaries.
Free
TrimTheFat 0.7
Recover space from universal binaries.
Free
Background
In January of 2006, Apple release Macintosh computers based on Intel chips and, for the second time in their history, brought forth an executable file format that supports multiple architectures. While much of the space consumed by typical Mac OS applications is in resource files that are architecture neutral, a complex application can also use up a fair amount of disk space per architecture. TrimTheFat gives users the means to regain disk space by eliminating the executable code for architectures in which they have no interest. And yes, TrimTheFat is a fat (or "Universal" this decade) application. You can save about 40KB if you run it on itself. (Do that and get rid of this fluffy help content and you can shrink this tool by half.)
Usage
TrimTheFat has two modes of operation. The simplest is to just drag-and-drop the executable(s) you want to trim onto the TrimTheFat application icon. It will strip off the excess code, tell you what it has done, and then silently exit. Alternatively, you can run the application directly and TrimTheFat will show a window with a "drop zone" onto which you can drag executables.
License
TrimTheFat is freeware. No payment is required, although if you find it useful contributions to help support and expand it are happily accepted.
System Requirements
TrimTheFat requires a Macintosh running Mac OS X 10.2.8 or higher.
Support
While TrimTheFat is freeware, it is a supported product and will be treated as such. Feature requests are always welcome.
If you'd like to contact me about TrimTheFat for any reason, just click here.
Known Issues (It's still not 1.0, after all.)
•TrimTheFat doesn't burrow (so far). If you have an application package that contains executable code besides the main application, such as helper applications or console tools, it won't find them.
•You pretty much have to be an admin user for this to work, but then again it seems like you should be an admin user if you're messing with application code anyway.
•Before 1.0, I intend to add an optional interactive mode that will let you specify which architecture(s) you'd like to remove from a given executable.
•I'm also tempted to add some kind of feedback indicating the reason that TrimTheFat wasn't able to trim (such as the binary not being multi-architecture or a permissions issue).
More Info