I have a workspace built using MS-Visual Studio 2005 with all C code.In that i see many functions which are not called but they are still compiled(they are not under any compile time macro to disable them from compiling).
I set following optimization settings for the MS-VS2005 project to remove that unused code:-
Optimization level - /Ox
Enable whole program optimization - /GL
I tried both Favor speed /Ot and Favor Size /Os
Inspite of all these options, when i see the linker generated map file, I see the symbols(unsed functions) names present in the map file.
Am I missing something? I want to completely remove the unused code.
How do I do this?
The compiler compiles C files one-at-a-time. Therefore, while compiling a C-file that does contains an unused function, the compiler cannot be sure that it will not be called from another file and hence it will compile that function too. However, if that function were declared as static (file-scope), then the compiler would know it is not used and hence remove it.
Even with whole program optimization, I think it would still not be done since the compilation could be for a library.
Linkers do something similar to what you are looking for. If your code links against a library containing multiple objects, then any objects that do not contain functions used by your code (directly or indirectly) would not be included in the final executable.
One option would be to separate your code into individual libraries and object files.
PS - This is just my guess. The behavior of the compiler (with whole program optimization) or linker essentially depends on the design choices of that particular compiler or linker
On our projects we have a flag set under the project properties\Linker\Refrences. We set it to Eliminate Unreferenced Data (/OPT:REF), according to the description this is supposed to remove function calls or data that are never used. I am just going by the description, I have never tested this or worked with it. But I just happened to see it within the last hour and figured it might be something you could try.
Related
While compiling and Xcode swift project for MacOS, not used functions are removed from the binary (removed by the optimizer I guess). Is there a way to tell the compiler to not remove unused functions, perhaps with a compiler option (--force-attribute?) so that even with optimization enabled those functions remain in the binary?
I know that if a global function is declared as public (public func test()) then it's not removed even if not used (Since it can be used by other modules), but I can't use public since that would export the symbol for that function.
Any suggestion?
If this is indeed removed by the optimiser, then the answer is two-fold.
The optimiser removes only things that it can prove are safely removable. So to make it not remove something, you remove something that the optimiser uses to prove removability.
For example, you can change the visibility of a function in the .bc file by running a pass that makes the functions externally callable. When a function is private to the .bc file (also called module) and not used, then the compiler can prove that nothing will ever call it. If it's visible beyong the .bc file, then the compiler must assume that something can come along later and call it, so the function has to be left alive.
This is really the generic answer to how to prevent an optimisation: Prevent the compiler from inferring that the optimisation is safe.
Writing and invoking a suitable pass is left as an exercise for the reader. Writing should be perhaps 20 lines of code, invoking… might be simple, or not, it depends on your setting. Quite often you can add a call to opt to your build system.
As I discovered, the solution here is to use a magic compiler flag -enable-private-imports (described here: "...Allows this module's internal and private API to be accessed") which basically add the function name to the list #llvm.used that you can see in the bitcode, the purpose of the list is:
If a symbol appears in the #llvm.used list, then the compiler,
assembler, and linker are required to treat the symbol as if there is
a reference to the symbol that it cannot see (which is why they have
to be named)
(cit.) As described here.
This solves my original problem as the private function even if not used anywhere and not being public, during compilation is not stripped out by the optimiser.
I want to compile my app using matlab-compiler it does so, but with issues...
It says there are some functions that are not licensed for compilation.
The problem is that I haven't used those functions (one of them is fimath.m) in my app.
I think these functions are used inside some of my functions which I don't know.
My question is how to find out which one of my functions are using those functions in order to remove them or replace them with other functions.
There are more than 50 functions in my app and it's not possible to check them one by one.
For every returned "unlicensed" function you can execute the following command,
dbstop in <function name> % without the <>
and afterwards run your code normally for several typical inputs/cases. If it stops at one of these breakpoints, look at the call stack (using either dbstack or the Editor tab of the MATLAB GUI), and identify the entry point from your own code.
If none of the breakpoints is ever hit, it could mean that these functions are referred-to inside the code, but some logic is preventing their execution (turning them, practically, to "unreachable code"). In this case, you will likely need to remove these references manually. To know where from, using information from the link posted by VTodorov you can list the dependencies of each file using
[fList,pList] = matlab.codetools.requiredFilesAndProducts('myFun.m');
which can be called on the output of dir (after some minor conversion). It could be useful to use the toponly flag.
I use Delphi 7 and I encountered a very annoying thing. One of my projects has gone quite large and a form I used in one of the units became obsolete. I decided to get rid of it. It seems I can't. The IDE always asks for .dfm file, no matter what i tried (and I think i was very thorough).
Here's what I did:
First, I used the IDE's Remove from Project to remove the whole thing from the project. Then I commented out all sections that used anything in that unit and compiled, bulit and ran the project. It went without any errors or warnings. I saved all files and closed the Delphi IDE, started up a Notepad and removed the form's declaration from the unit, then deleted every associated file, except the .pas (with this, it became like any other regular unit).
Then I searched every file in the project's folder with Total Commander to see if any of them contained the name of the removed unit. None did.
I started Delphi and loaded the project.
With this I felt satisfied and added the unit's name to the uses list and pressed Compile.
IT STILL LOOKS FOR THE DAMNED DFM!!
If someone knows, please explain this to me. What did I miss?
If the compiler is looking for the .dfm file it will be because the compiler is including a unit that contains this:
{$R *.dfm}
That is what tells the compiler to link the .dfm file with the same name as the unit.
It seems likely that you still refer to the unit somewhere in your project. The compiler must be finding either a .pas file or a compiled .dcu file for your unit. Search for all files named <UnitName>.pas and <UnitName>.dcu. Remove these files. Then you will encounter compiler errors whenever you have code that attempts to use those units. Deal with those by removing the unit from the uses clause that names it. Then you should be done.
os i figured out how to use the -mthumb and -mno-thumb compiler flag and more or less understand what it's doing.
But what is the -mthumb-interlinking flag doing? when is it needed, and is it set for the whole project if i set 'compile for thumb' in my project settings?
thanks for the info!
Open a terminal and type man gcc
Do you mean -mthumb-interwork ?
-mthumb-interwork
Generate code which supports calling between the ARM and Thumb
instruction sets. Without this option the two instruction sets
cannot be reliably used inside one program. The default is
-mno-thumb-interwork, since slightly larger code is generated when
-mthumb-interwork is specified.
If this is related to a build configuration, you should be able to set it separately for each configuration "such as Release or Debug".
Why do you want to change these settings? I know using thumb instructions save some memory but will it save enough to matter in this case?
my application uses both, thumb and vfp code but i never specifically
set -thumb-interwork flag.. how is that possible?
According to man page, without that flag the two instructions sets
cannot be reliably used inside one program.
It says "reliably"; so without that option, it seems they still can be mixed within a single program but it might be "unreliably". I think normally mixing both instructions sets works, the compiler is smart enough to figure out when it has to switch from one set to another one. However, there might be border cases the compiler just doesn't understand correctly and it might fail to see that it should switch instruction sets here, causing the application to fail (most likely it will crash). This option generates special code, so that no matter what your code does, the switching always happens correctly and reliably; the downside is that this extra code is needed for every global visible function and thus increases the binary side (I have no idea if it also might slow down function calls a little bit, I personally would expect that).
Please also note the following two settings:
-mcallee-super-interworking
Gives all externally visible functions in the file being
compiled an ARM instruction set header
which switches to Thumb mode before executing the rest of
the function. This allows these
functions to be called from non-interworking code.
-mcaller-super-interworking
Allows calls via function pointers (including virtual
functions) to execute correctly regardless
of whether the target code has been compiled for
interworking or not. There is a small overhead
in the cost of executing a function pointer if this option
is enabled.
Though I think you only need those, when building libraries to be used with other projects; but I don't know for sure. The GCC thumb handling is definitely "underdocumented".
GWT compiles the Java source into Javascript, and names the files according to a hash of their contents. I'm getting a new set of files every compile, because the javascript contents are changing, even when I don't change the source at all.
The files are different for OBF and PRETTY output, but if I set it to DETAILED, they're no longer different every compile. In PRETTY, I can see that all/most of the differences between compiles are in the value parameters for typeId. For example, a funciton called initValues() is called with different values for it's typeId parameter.
In PRETTY mode, the differences you see are allocation of Java Classes to TypeIds. It's how GWT manages run time type checking. You'll notice a table at the bottom of each script essentially mapping each typeId to all compatible superclasses. This is how GWT can still throw ClassCastException in JavaScript (though you should run into this very rarely!).
In OBF mode, the differences are due to the allocation of minified function names.
In both cases, it's due to the order the compiler is processing the code. Some internal symbol tables might be using a non-ordered collection store symbols for processing. It can happen for lots of reasons.
As far as I know, GWT will compile a new version every time you compile it, this is a feature ;)
You can use ant to control it though, so that it only builds the GWT section of your application if it's actually changed:
http://wiki.shiftyjelly.com/index.php/GWT#Use_The_Power_of_Ant_to_Build_Changes_Only