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: 2013-07-11 06:25:32

On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Dave Abrahams <dave_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> on Wed Jul 03 2013, Eric Niebler <eniebler-AT-boost.org> wrote:
>
>>> Remove duplicated code (a big part of Boost.Log is
>>> a reinvented Boost.Thread). Do not generate so many parsers (type erasure?).
>>>
>>> Created a ticket #8773 (https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/8773)
>>
>> If Boost.Log is truly that large, I agree with the OP that it's a
>> problem. An effort should be made to bring the size down to something
>> reasonable.
>
> A possibility not previously mentioned: putting more code in
> headers/templates, so it is instantiated only as needed.

But this will move the excessive binary size to the user's code +
increase user's code compile times. IMHO, from the user's standpoint
this is worse than having a large library to link with.

I admit that when there are many optional components which may or may
not be used in the user's code (like in Boost.Spirit, for example),
this approach is beneficial because it is unrealistic to pre-compile
all possible combinations of the components. But in case of Boost.Log
the parsers are self-contained, so the user cannot pick some parts of
them and reduce the size that way. Selecting character types to
instantiate parsers on is possible, but even for a single character
type the resulting binary size is considerable.