ASN.1 is used in a lot of different areas and a new area that is within the Internet of Things (IoT). In particular Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) uses ASN.1 UPER-based messaging.
One characteristic of these devices is they are small, so code size is critical. We have been working on ways to make our ASN1C generated code and run-time libraries as compact as possible for applications such as these. In our latest ASN1C v7.2.1 patch release, we are now including a new set of compact libraries for Linux. These can be found in the c/lib_compact directories. They are built with gcc using maximum space optimization settings and with a lot of non-critical code stripped out. The compact libraries are roughly 25% smaller than the standard libraries.
In addition to using the compact libraries, additional steps can be taken to reduce the size of the generated code. We touched on some of these in a past blog post entitled "Optimizing PER Encoding and Code Footprint". We would also recommend using the following command-line options (the equivalent GUI option is in parentheses):
- -compact (Generate compact code)
- -noinit (uncheck the Generate Initialization Functions checkbox)
- -noenumconvert (do not generate enum-to-string conversion functions - should only be enabled if print functions are generated)
Other options that you may or may not be able use:
- -lax (Do not generate constraint checks)
- -strict-size (Interpret size constraints strictly)
If all of these measures are employed, users could potentially see the size of their application reduced by one half or more.