[LLVMdev] Why are LLVM libraries enormous?

[David Piepgrass]

> > On Jul 23, 2010, at 10:24 AM, David Piepgrass wrote:
> >
> >> The top ten LLVM libraries (Win32 *.lib) are pretty huge:
> >>
> >> Release Bld  Debug Bld   Name
> >> 24,510,490   71,038,240  LLVMCodeGen.lib
> [snip]
> > Not sure about Win32, but here are some numbers on OS X for
> comparison:
> >
> > 5,282,356 libLLVMCodeGen.a
> 
> Comparing the size of the static libraries makes little sense, and even
> less when they are compiled by different tools. What really matters is
> the size of the executables.
> 
> I agree that LLVM can be considered a heavyweight dependency on this
> aspect.

Why is the size of static libraries a "nonsensical" topic of discussion? Anyway, in the same example I mentioned that the size of HowToUseJIT (an executable) is very large (15.4 MB debug, 3.4 MB release); as is a small example, I'd expect any real-world executable to be larger. I think it's fair to wonder what makes it is so large, why MacOS seems to get different results, and whether it is possible to construct an example less than 1 MB.