Re: Baby X is bor nagain

On 24/06/2024 19:10, Scott Lurndal wrote:

bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:

On 24/06/2024 18:02, Scott Lurndal wrote:

bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:

On 24/06/2024 16:10, Michael S wrote:

>

But my project has much more than 34 modules. 164 modules compiled
during build + several dozens in libraries.

>
Does that matter? My example is a smaller project, but I'm comparing the
rate of compilation not total time.
>
If you want a bigger example, yesterday I posted one involving 140 .c
files, total EXE size is 5MB (don't know .text as this is ELF format).

>
Why do you believe that the size of the executable is interesting?

>
Well, what metric IS interesting?
>
You seem to not care whether an executable is 10KB, 10MB, or 10GB. You
really don't think there's correspondence with build-time?

 No.  The ELF file contains a lot of stuff that never gets
loaded into memory (symbol tables, DWARF section data, etc);
writing to the object files by the compiler is an insignificant
component of the overall compile time.

By ELF I mean executable binary not object files. And I never work with executable files with debug info.
So the size of an executable file will mainly be the size of the code segment, plus the size of the initialised data. Anything else, import tables etc, is a smaller overhead.
For ones generated by compilers for lower level languages for x64, a rule of thumb is that every 10 bytes corresponds very roughly (depending on the amount of init data and how it is presented in source code) to one line of source code.
You can tweak that, eg. look only at .text size, and estimate the size of preprocessed source code, or ignore declarations etc.

Build time is not related in any way to the size of the
ELF.

Yes it is. It is related to the amount of code in the program, and the amount of initialised data.
Now I guess you're going bring up examples where a tiny ELF file takes ages to build, and a huge one is instant.
And I can probably come up with scenarios where it's quicker for me to walk or cycle from A to B, than it takes to drive with a 200mph supercar.
But generally driving is faster than walking or cycling.