Re: [boost] Extremely large Visual Studio libboost_log_setup* binaries

Subject: Re: [boost] Extremely large Visual Studio libboost_log_setup* binaries
From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-07-03 11:48:00

On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 7:28 PM, Tom Kent <lists_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 8:32 AM, Andrey Semashev
> <andrey.semashev_at_[hidden]>wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 4:47 PM, Tom Kent <lists_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> >
> > > In the 1.54.0 release, I noticed that the size of the binaries built
> with
> > > visual studio was more than twice that of the previous releases. For
> > > example the msvc-8.0-64 build went from 2GB to 5GB. Upon further
> > > investigation, almost all of that increase was in the
> libboost_log_setup*
> > > binaries, which were each in the 100s of MBs.
> > >
> > > Does anyone know if there is a reason for this? Is it a configuration
> > > error?
> > >
> >
> > Yes, these libraries are expected to be quite large, especially when
> debug
> > symbols are on.
> >
> We're not talking about a bit bigger, these are bigger than all the rest
> put together.
>

I did not compare library sizes purposefully, but it is very possible to be
the case. If you build the complete version of the library, the resulting
binaries are expected to be large. Someone else asked me a similar question
on the SF, and the answer is, well, because there is lots of code in there.
The setup library is especially big because it contains rather complicated
Boost.Spirit parsers for filters and formatters and it instantiates parsed
filters and formatters for all fundamental types. Multiply that by the
number of character types the library supports.