[LLVMdev] code coverage instrumentation

[Moshtaghi, Alireza]

Hi Justin,
Thanks for your response,
Your suggestion works, though as you have also suggested, would be great
value if an option is added to put the coverage data into a separate file.
Our build considers some of the hardware limitations and would not build a
full object file with both instructions and mapping data if they get too
big.
In addition, building two large systems which do the same thing would be a
big waste.

I would think that if an option is added to the compiler, it would also
require an absolute filepath which will be appended by the compiler with
the coverage information from each new compilation unit right? Or you are
thinking of another way? Hypothetically if the coverage info is saved in
elf format, llvm-cov could read it without modification right?

Nevertheless, It might be a useful thing for others as well, so would it
be possible that you add it to the tree? Or if you give me some pointers,
I can implement them and send the patch.

An alternative would probably be tweaking the linker to create two files
instead of one which would be kind of a hack IMHO.

Thanks
Ali


On 4/9/15, 2:51 PM, "Justin Bogner" <mail at justinbogner.com> wrote:

>>Q2- The instrumented executable size of both llgcov-way and llcovprof-way
>>(with and without optimization) is bloated 2x to 10x or in some cases 50x
>>depending on the program. Here is output of size command for the
>>variations on
>>a simple test program that I wrote:
>>    text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
>>    5625     700    1696    8021    1f55 simpletest.-O0-g.llcovprof.
>>   12838     776    1808   15422    3c3e simpletest.-O0-g.llgcov.
>>    1481     492    1616    3589     e05 simpletest.-O0.none
>>    5337     700    1696    7733    1e35 simpletest.-O1-g.llcovprof.
>>   12246     776    1792   14814    39de simpletest.-O1-g.llgcov.
>>    1345     492    1616    3453     d7d simpletest.-O1.none
>>I was wondering if there is any suggestion for reducing the size either
>>through more optimization or by compromising some feature.
>
>The coverage data that the instrprof coverage adds to the binary isn't
>actually necessary for runtime, so you could probably get away with
>building the binary twice (once with -fcoverage-mapping, once with only
>-fprofile-instr-generate) and using one for execution and the other for
>data collection. The binaries will still be larger, due to the profiling
>itself, but it might help.
>
>Let me know if this works - it might be worth adding an option to emit
>the coverage data into a separate file if this is valuable.
>