Does GCC record optimization information into binary file?

[Richard Biener]

> Am 29.01.2026 um 16:57 schrieb Qing Zhao <qing.zhao@oracle.com>:
> 
> Our internal customer is asking for this feature.
> 
> They used icc currently, with icc, then can get inline list, prof_used list, etc. from the binary.
> 
> The old studio compiler also provided such feature, there was compiler commentary section in the binary to record
> many of the important compiler transformations along with the line number information.
> 
> If there is any performance issue with the application, such information will be very useful. Especially for large applications.

The best bet is probably -fopt-info which I think can do alternate outputs, eventually JSON.  That’s not in the binary itself, of course, but you could place it there with some linker script.

Richard 

> Qing
> 
> 
>> On Jan 29, 2026, at 05:30, Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com> wrote:
>> 
>> * Jakub Jelinek via Gcc:
>> 
>>> On Thu, Jan 29, 2026 at 09:49:40AM +0100, Richard Biener via Gcc wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, Jan 28, 2026 at 4:43 PM Qing Zhao via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>>>>>> Does GCC provide any option to record optimization information, such as inlining, loop transformation,
>>>>>> profiling consistency, etc into specific sections of binary code?
>>>>> 
>>>>> No.
>>> 
>>> Well, inlining is recorded in debug info.  And I don't see what benefit
>>> woiuld be to encode the rest, without source information like that is not
>>> really useful and with source around you can always recompile and look for
>>> compiler dumps or opt info, debug info provides details how a particular
>>> TU has been compiled (with what options etc.).
>> 
>> It's hard to recompile in a generic fashion because build systems are so
>> varied.  Depending on what people are trying to achieve, that's more of
>> a theoretical option.
>> 
>> (Capturing source code so that it becomes available for recompilation
>> would be interesting for many other applications, too.)
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Florian
>> 
>