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Re: Huge Increase in Unstripped Executable Size G++ 2.95 to 3.2
- From: Jim Wilson <wilson at tuliptree dot org>
- To: Andi Kleen <ak at suse dot de>
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org, nabeel at netzero dot com
- Date: 28 Feb 2003 10:53:05 -0500
- Subject: Re: Huge Increase in Unstripped Executable Size G++ 2.95 to 3.2
- References: <20030227.154544.18888.253032@webmail06.lax.untd.com.suse.lists.egcs><3E5ED96F.9090902@tuliptree.org.suse.lists.egcs> <p73ptpc7rjt.fsf@amdsimf.suse.de>
On Fri, 2003-02-28 at 03:11, Andi Kleen wrote:
> Jim Wilson <wilson at tuliptree dot org> writes:
> > while DWARF2 debug info is designed
> > to be more compact than stabs,
> That's a joke isn't it?
Not at all. DWARF is provably more compact that stabs. However, size
wise, our stabs implementation is more mature than our DWARF
implementation, and as a result, in many cases, our stabs output is
smaller than our DWARF output. If you would like to contribute patches
to help fix this, that would be great.
Also, keep in mind that DWARF is more expressive than stabs. In some
cases, the stabs are smaller because they contain less info. Try to
debug complicated C++ programs with stabs, and you may find that you
can't, because too much info is missing. In this case, smaller debug
info is not necessarily better debug info.
There are also likely other issues that need to be addressed.
We know that our DWARF info is bigger than our stabs info, but DWARF
really is better, and the size problem will eventually be fixed when
enough people get tired of ignoring it.
Jim