The only lesson from these stories is that perhaps default settings should change. Disable debugging info so people can no longer debug and enable smartlinking so you need to wait longer for your compiler.... But I'm sure we'll get complaints that the debugger doesn't work then.
I would use this for releases, not development copies. I don't care how big something is when I'm debugging it.

Exactly what are you using to "strip" the exe? I know for Windows you can remove the "reloc" section, but that only gives a 5% drop in size. Or thereabouts.

And I wasn't saying that you were talking BS, I was just asking for it to be posted. Not source or the like, since I uninstalled FPC, but the process.