Re: stage rule on windows problem

From: C. Andy Martin (andy_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-11-24 17:33:13

Rene Rivera wrote:
> Similar results on my code... Which I forgot to mention. Don't have 
> exact figures with me at this time... But the size difference between 
> debug (which has all the symbols for me) and release (which removes all 
> symbols except the dllexport ones) is more than 80%.

The numbers I quoted were from _release_! The debug build right now is 
45 MB! Correct me if I'm wrong, but the discussion was about the dynamic 
symbol table (used for exporting symbols to the dynamic loader). The 
static symbol table is used by the compile-time linker and by the 
debugger. The static symbol table isn't needed to execute code, so you 
can always strip it out.

If we could strip out unneeded symbols (symbols which don't need to be 
referenced by other modules) it seems you could really shrink the size 
of the dynamic table. Of course, the reason the .dynstr section is so 
big is that the mangled template names are so long. Here is an example 
obtained with objdump -T:

_ZN5boost6python7objects23caller_py_function_implINS0_6detail6callerINS1_6detail8py_iter_ISt3mapISt4pairISsSsE15ConnectionStateSt4lessIS9_ESaIS8_IKS9_SA_EEESt17_Rb_tree_iteratorISE_RSE_PSE_ENS_3_bi16protected_bind_tINSL_6bind_tISK_PFSK_RSG_ENSL_5list1INS_3argILi1EEEEEEEEESW_NS0_25return_internal_referenceILj1ENS0_21default_call_policiesEEEEESY_NS_3mpl7vector2INS1_14iterator_rangeISZ_SK_EENS0_14back_referenceISO_EEEEEEEclEP7_objectS1B_

This string contains 439 characters! (for just one symbol!)

-Andy