[boost] Re: Fixing slow link times

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-10-01 06:34:43

Ben Young <ben.young_at_[hidden]> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Here at Transversal we recently came upon the problem of really slow link
> times, especially for our Boost Python library bindings, using gcc 3.2.1
> and 3.2.3. Searching the internet suggested that the problem was in the
> gcc constant merging across translation units which can be disabled using
> -fno-merge-constants. However, this didn't fix the problem. Investigating
> further it appeared that 90% of the time was spent merging the strings of
> debug constants, and this wasn't being disabled by the option.
>
> So we hacked gcc to add a new option which disables this merging. It took
> our link times for our python bindings from 20mins (on a dual 1Ghz Athlon
> with 1G ram) to just over 4s, a 300x improvement!
>
> I inclose the patch below for all those interested. The option is
> -fno-merge-debug-strs.
>
> Cheers
>
> Ben
> ---
>
> P.S As far as I can tell it especially effected our python bindings due
> to the massive number of symbols produced by boost::mpl. The problem in
> gcc appears to be a merging algorithm which is quadratic in the number of
> symbols!

This is some great sleuthing, but doesn't it seem like the right patch
is to fix the algorithm so it's no worse than linear?

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com