Re: GNAT Codesize

[fjh@mundook.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson)]

dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

>John McCabe said
>
>"By debugging information here are you referring to e.g. symbol tables
>and that kind of thing? If so, is it not possible to keep this
>information in a separate file akin to what embedded cross-development
>systems tend to use?"
>
>Yes, exactly, symbol table type information. Yes you could keep it in
>a separate file, but 
>
>(a) it would not save any disk space to have two files instead of one
>(b) you don't load the symbol information, so it would not save load time
>(c) it would violate system standards, which are to keep debugging 
>	information in the objects and executables. The GNAT approach
>	is deliberately system standard compatible to allow use of
>	standard debuggers.

Also	(d) the increased number of files would slow down directory
	    lookups, which can be an important factor in compilation time
	    for large projects (with typical file systems, searching a
	    directory with N files is O(N))
and	(e) it would be irritating; simple commands like `cp foo foo.old'
	    or `rm foo' would not be sufficient, and more complicated
	    commands would have to be used instead.

On the other hand, it might well be a good idea to make the `-s' (strip)
option the default if `-g' (debug) was not specified on the command
line during the linking step.  That's what I did for the Mercury
compiler, and we haven't got any complaints about it.

--
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>   |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
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