Re: GCJ vs. C++ in RAM

[Andrew Haley <aph at redhat dot com>]

Vladimir Levin writes:
 > For the time being I am thinking of statically linked executable.

Right.  Well, Java is a dynamic language that sometimes has trouble
with static linkage: for example, some Java calls go via a string that
is the name of a method which is looked up at runtime.  gcj can
mostly get around that, but some libraries such as crypto may need a
little alteration.

 > So what I am asking is, given that I have a moderately complex,
 > 50,000 line program which makes use of various libraries such as
 > collections, threads, sockets, how much RAM will the program use if
 > it is written in C++ vs. Java? Both the Java and C++ versions would
 > be statically linked.

Lat time I looked, all of libgcj was about 6 megabytes.  libstdc++ is
smaller.  However, you'll not link with all of libgcj.

Java has some additional overhead for reflection data, and it does a
bunch of runtime checking that C++ doesn't do.  All this costs space.

 > I realize it may be difficult to formulate a very precise answer to
 > this question without actually building the app in both cases, but
 > if some experienced voices out there could give me an informed
 > guess, I'd sure appreciate it. I am willing to strip the statically
 > linked executable and I may also be able to gzexe it (not quite
 > sure what the runtime performance penalty would be). I have a
 > feeling that the garbage collection may be a significant factor,
 > but I am not sure how big, so if I could get a sense of what the
 > RAM usage in C++ would be with and without the Boehm garbage
 > collector, that would be great.

I don't think that any of us could do this without making an
experiment.  But with all the reflection data and type checking, there
will be an increase in size.

Andrew.