Software size is too big

Find the elf program file for your working and non-working projects and look at the symbols (nm file, or objdump -n file) and program sections (objdump -p file). That might help to identify the bloat.

The altera printf() pulls in a lot of code!

I suspect it maps to fprintf(stdout, ...) so requires large tracts of stdio rather that being implemented as a console write - as a unix kernel's printf() is usually implemented.

After all, the likelyhood of wanting an actual stdio implementation on a real fpga embedded application is minimal.