gcc 4.1 code size

[Andreas Killaitis <andreas at killaitis dot net>]

Hello list,

I have a question concerning the size of the code generated by gcc  
4.0.2 and 4.1.
We talk about a C++ app with many smaller (30k) or larger (4M) C++  
libraries.
Being happy the size of those libs decreased by about 20% when  
switching from
gcc 3.4.4 to gcc 4.0.2 (introducing --visibility-inlines-hidden), I  
was now astonished
that my tests with gcc 4.1 showed that the library size has been  
grown by about 10%.
The compiler parameters have not been changed for this test and the  
test has been
done on the same system, so it must be related to gcc. Is this a  
regression, a feature
(possibly better code inlining) or just the fact that gcc 4.0.2 is a  
release version and
the gcc 4.1 was just a snapshot? Nevertheless, the generated code
runs about 3% faster than the 4.0.2 code, so there's nothing to  
complain.

The used compile options are:

-ftemplate-depth-32
-finline-functions
-finline-limit-100000
-O3
-march=athlon-mp
-ftracer
-fvisibility-inlines-hidden
-ftree-vectorize
-pipe


Andreas Killaitis