Re: [boost] Support for Cell processor

Subject: Re: [boost] Support for Cell processor
From: Peter Bindels (dascandy_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-10-15 04:13:44

2008/10/15 Joel Falcou <joel.falcou_at_[hidden]>:
> Beman Dawes a écrit :
>>
>> IIRC, <iostream> is the only standard library header that costs something
>> to
>> include even if the translation unit doesn't actually use it. That's
>> because
>> of the standard stream objects, cin, cout, etc.
>
> Exactly and that's those only objects that skyrocket SPE binary size it
> seems.

I've noticed on another embedded platform that including the iostream
libraries the binary more than doubles, in part because the linker
only links in whole objects and each object refers to other parts that
aren't functionally used, but are used based on the object references.
In particular, it includes a lot of locale stuff that won't have any
use on an embedded platform (since it's usually logging) but it'll be
linked in anyway. On an embedded system with 1M of memory, eating 80k
with iostreams is unacceptable, especially when it uses most of it for
unused references.

Using a better linker sounds great, but most embedded systems are
hardlocked to whatever the system vendor gives you. In case of elf
objects, they don't contain enough information to leave out unused
symbols unless your compiler separates all symbols into a section per
symbol, which it doesn't do by default.

Given that the logging is optional (and probably pointless on an
embedded system) #ifdeffing out the iostream header seems right.