link times

Does your project make use of C++ templates?

Hi Archaeologist,

Yes, there is quite extensive use of templates in some of the modules.  I have worked around the template

issues in the optimizer, compiler etc. by option choice, splitting files, recoding and explicit instantiation, etc.

There is no template instantiation occurring at link time at all - I have removed those recompilations through

extensive explicit instantiation - so the times I'm citing are purely lnk6x.exe times.  Platform is DM648, BTW.

A few months ago I did take a couple days with the 7.2 tools and had some other problems, but my recollections

are that they weren't significantly faster than the 6.1.19 tools at the time.   I'm going to have to make a decision

to move to the new tools if they can help these issues, live with the situation, or move to another platform very

shortly.  Thank you for any advice - would you imagine your 7.2+ ARM cross tool chain would do better with these

issues on modules I could move to it on a platform change?

Regards,

Jason Kalin

Please try building with either the v7.3.x (preferred) or v7.2.x (okay) compiler.  Build for EABI with option --abi=eabi.  Under EABI, different methods are used to instantiate templates and avoid duplicate type information that should result in a much faster build and link.  If you are linking with other packages such as BIOS, then you need to obtain EABI versions of those packages.

Thanks and regards,

-George

Ok, I will give the 7.3 series a try.  I understand mileage may vary significantly depending on the application, but

if the information is available:

1) Are there any apples to apples performance comparison statistics available on sample applications for the

different tools in the chain, specifically execution time and memory usage, from 6.1 through 7.3?

2) Perhaps 50% of this project's code is more management plane and suitable for a general purpose processor

such as the ARM on a dual-core platform - I imagine it's a different tool chain, but can I expect closer to PC-like

execution time and memory usage for the tool chain if I move the management plane to an ARM cross environment?

3) I had some problems with large exception tables crashing the 7.2 tool chain a few months ago - have these been

resolved in the 7.3 series?

4) I haven't read - Is the 7.3 series 64bit and not subject to the 2GB memory limit?

5) Is it possible to get an extension of the 1 month trial license for the 7.2 tool chain as I try the 7.3 tool chain?

Regards,

Jason Kalin

6) As far as I understand it, it looks like the NDK is only distributed with COFF builds?  So I will have to rebuild this from

source with the 7.3 tools?

Before you try to build your own code with EABI, you need to make sure all the components you use are available in EABI versions.  I don't know much about the NDK, but it probably is not available for EABI.  This page talks about how to rebuild it.  Based on my quick look at that page, I suspect rebuilding for EABI would be a challenge.  You are welcome to try.  If it goes smoothly, great.  If not, then don't worry about it.

For now, I presume building for EABI is not an option.

Have you tried the linker -b option?  It is described on this page.  It might help.

Thanks and regards,

-George

Hi George,

I am using the -b option currently - I had many unending links and crashes earlier in the project without it.

Unfortunately, I can't really disregard the NDK as I need a TCP/IP stack for the project so I either need an

elf build, the ability to rebuild it myself or choose to move to another TCP/IP stack such as the linux stack for the ARM.

Thanks for your help.

Regards,

Jason Kalin