CCS compiler produces huge obj file compared to gcc

Nitin,

A few observations and comments:

C6000 compiler version 5.1.0 is quite old and we have had 3 major releases since then - 6.0.x, 6.1.x and 7.0.x, which incrementally contain bug fixes and improvements. I would suggest trying out of the newer versions to see if the build time and code size improved. You can get to compiler releases from here: http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Compiler_Releases

Do you find most of the build time to be spent in the compiler phase or linker phase? If it is in the linker phase, try using the -b linker option to see it that helps. More information on this option is here: http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Linker_Runs_Too_Long

The size of the output file from the codegen tools (.out or .lib) is not a good indicator of the size of the code/data, because it includes a lot of debug information as well. If you generate a link map file as part of the build, this will give a better idea of the size of your code and data sections.

Thanks for the reply.

I'm actually just doing 'compilation' of a 3rd party source code to be used in my DSP code base as a library. As per your suggestion I've downloaded latest compiler v 7.0.4. With this compiler I see improvement in speed but size has actually gone up a bit.

This code is using lot of nested pre-processors macros, could this be an issue with TI compiler which is producing large obj files?

regards,

I did try -o3 and -m options but didn't help much. I also removed debug symbols.

As I mentioned is my previous post that there are lot of nested pre-processor used in the code.

Could you let me know the behaviour of CCS compiler  in case of a nested pre-processor like following?

Here a macro (FOO) expansion has pre-processor directives in it

#define FOO  \

foo (void) \

{ \

#ifdef  X... \

        fn1(); \

#else \

        fn2(); \

#endif \

}

How does compiler behaves in this case?

thanks !

That's not legal C.  A preprocessor #define cannot contain other preprocessor statements.  You have to write it like this ...

#ifdef X
#define FOO          \
   foo(void)         \
   {                 \
      fn1();         \
   }
#else
#define FOO          \
   foo(void)         \
   {                 \
      fn2();         \
   }
#endif

Thanks and regards,

-George

Another version:

#ifdef X
#define FOO_CALLEE fn1
#else
#define FOO_CALLEE fn2
#endif

#define FOO         \
   foo(void)        \
   {                \
      FOO_CALLEE(); \
   }

Thanks for your reply and suggestions !

As suggested by you, I looked at the obj file using ofd6x utility and was surprised to see a huge ".debug_info" section present there in spite of NOT compiling with "-g" option. This is the reason behind huge size of library.

 I'm providing only "-c" and "-O3" options. As per my understanding debug info is inserted only with "-g" or "--symdebug:xxx" options, right? 

Please help.

regards,

Thanks so much !

George,

Is there a way in TI compiler to reduce the the debug_info size?

e.g. gcc gives "-glevel" option for that.

thanks,

\nitin

There isn't a way to directly control the level of debug info, however the different --symdebug options do differ in the amount of debug info added to the object file. The options are documented in Section 2.3.4 of the TMS470 Compiler Users Guide.