[boost] boost::function code size

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-06-30 04:44:17

Hello,
I've became interested in how efficient code-size-wise boost::function is, so 
I wrote a small script which generates a function which calls boost::function 
object N times and finds the size of the generated function.

The results are somewhat interesting and somewhat alarming (to me).

On gcc 3.3 with -Os, each call to boost::function costs 147 bytes of code 
size. With -O3 it's about 166 bytes.

On gcc 3.4 calls cost 203 bytes with -Os and between 220 and 240 with -O3. 
However, when boost::function is called 15 times, the inliner heuristics kick 
in and calls are no longer inlined -- meaning each call costs about 14 bytes.

This is a good thing for 3.4, but still:
1. For 3.3 boost::function causes a serious code bloat. 
2. Even for 3.4, I'm not sure how it will perform if calls are done in several 
modules. Or how the heuristics will work on non-trivial cases: if they use 
the % of size increase then on large modules boost::function inlining can 
cost much more.

Given that, IIUC, boost::function has to do indirect call somewhere anyway, 
I'm not sure inlining is such a good idea. Maybe some of the methods should 
be declared out-of-line, so that compiler don't try to inline them?

- Volodya