[fpc-devel] inline... and philosophy

[Sven Barth]

Am 10.11.2019 um 16:06 schrieb Michael Van Canneyt:
>
>
> On Sun, 10 Nov 2019, J. Gareth Moreton wrote:
>
>> This message chain has proven to be a lot more educational and 
>> insightful than I would have given it credit for.  Thanks everybody!
>>
>> I know a lot of the time, the size of binaries is just an illusion, 
>> along with unfair comparisons with GCC (a behemoth with corporate 
>> support) and Microsoft Visual C++ that often hides the size of 
>> binaries behind a redistributable library.  I don't ever seek to make 
>> binaries smaller at the expense of speed, but if I see a potential 
>> saving that could be done automatically, I dive for it!
>>
>> On 10/11/2019 14:47, Marco van de Voort wrote:
>>> (and btw, if you are serious about these scenarios, drop all 
>>> optimization work immediately, and start working on packages :-)
>>
>> I did try to start simple with the 'uComplex' unit, but concerns were 
>> raised because I changed the formal parameters to 'const' and aligned 
>> the complex type on x86-64 platforms so it can take advantage of XMM 
>> registers better (which, given proper optimisation, would result in 
>> both smaller code size and higher speed).  While I made sure that the 
>> interfaces would not change for Pascal code, assembler code that 
>> calls the functions (if it exists) might need to be changed slightly 
>> (something Florian raised).  I'm not quite sure what the rules are 
>> when it comes fo updating packages, other than the obvious one of not 
>> breaking old code.
>
> I think Marco referred to dynamically loadable packages (aka run-time
> packages)
In the meantime I've managed to fix the dynamic package support that had 
experienced a bit of bit rot in the last years. Though I've currently 
only tested Win32 and Win64 (x86_64-linux as well as *-darwin *should* 
work as well). And as before only compile time packages are supported.

For those that are interested, the sizes of the binaries for chmls are 
as follows:

=== output win32 begin ===

2633984 rtl.dll
414820 rtl.objpas.dll
247060 rtl.extra.dll
364625 rtl.generics.dll
389888 fcl.res.dll
788664 fcl.base.dll
962560 fcl.xml.dll
953676 chm.dll
68694 chmls.exe

=== output win32 end ===

=== output win64 begin ===

3707538 rtl.dll
601446 rtl.objpas.dll
345340 rtl.extra.dll
459357 rtl.generics.dll
568559 fcl.res.dll
1187518 fcl.base.dll
1602915 fcl.xml.dll
1419896 chm.dll
85131 chmls.exe

=== output win64 end ===

For those that wonder that rtl.generics is so small: the big part is 
contained in the metadata .pcp file:

- Win32: 38442358 rtl.generics.pcp
- Win64: 38607350 rtl.generics.pcp

Yes, it's massive, but only required on the development machine. :)

Regards,
Sven