[cfe-dev] Should dump methods be LLVM_ATTRIBUTE_USED only in debug builds?

[Chandler Carruth]

On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 8:19 PM, Nico Weber <thakis at chromium.org> wrote:

> (As context, for me this is mostly about clang-format since I noticed AST
> and Sema code making it into its final binary, which I thought is a bit
> silly. This is also only about a few hundred kilobytes, so I'm happy with
> whatever outcome we arrive at. I consider this a minor cleanup and I'm not
> strongly arguing for anything.)
>
> Chandler wrote:
> > Linker dead stripping is only one of many ways dead stripping can and
> does occur. The used attribute is a much more stable way of ensuring that
> these debugging aids are available.
>
> Oh? For example? (I'm curious, I didn't know this.)
>

LTO, archive member dropping (hopefully not relevant here), and some
linkers that do minimal dead stripping by default.

> Similarly, I really want to be able to call dump methods from a
> Release+Asserts binary. The +Asserts means that the increased binary size
> shouldn't be a problem, and this can be a huge help when debugging
> bootstrap miscompiles and in-the-wild crashers.
>
> You mostly diagnose crashes of clang in the wild, right? That's built
> without dead stripping anyways.
>

Not exclusively, no.

I tend to build everything in Release+Asserts, since I use trunk and want
> the internal sanity checks. I'm fine with the performance and size impact
> this has, but I don't agree that +Asserts necessarily implies "for
> debugging". (Again, I'm not strongly arguing for this, I'm just describing
> my perspective.)
>

Sure. We could completely separate out the "asserts" knob from the
"dumping" knob. We already enable turning on dumping without turning on
asserts. Historically, asserts have carried much more binary size and other
impact than the dumping methods. There may be a library layering issue if
you're seeing dump methods drag in large amounts of binary size into
clang-format.

My preference is for fewer knobs in general, but if there really are all
four states here (+asserts +dumping, -asserts -dumping, +asserts -dumping,
-asserts +dumping) then we can support that I guess. I just don't know of
any real demand.
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