6.6.1 vs 6.8.2 --- Re: large binary footprint ?

[Christian Maeder]

Don Stewart wrote:
> hp:
>> I convinced myself that the ~500kbytes for the 
>> 'hello' code is 'correct' in version 6.6.1.
>> [ The exact size on the platform mentioned below
>>   is 422k. ]
>>
>> Looks like version 6.8.2 blows up the binary code size
>> significantly --- 3.9Mbytes vs 0.422Mbytes.
>>
>> Is this a known issue with 6.8.2 ?
>> Is it a specific platform dependent issue --- i.e.
>> does it occur on linux machines ??

I can confirm HP's code size. I've no idea what went wrong (or differently):

-bash-3.00$ ls -l hello
-rwxr-xr-x   1 maeder   wimi     3907865 May 23 11:38 hello

> That's platform dependent. It means on ghc 6.8.2 wasn't built with
> split-objs enabled, so it includes a whole bunch of dead code 
> normally stripped out.
> 
> Consult whoever built the ghc on your platform, to ensure
> they know how to build with split objects.
> 
> -- Don

Object Splitting was enabled:

-bash-3.00$ ll hello
-rwxr-xr-x   1 maeder   wimi     3907865 May 23 11:38 hello

-bash-3.00$ ghc --info
  [("Project name","The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System")
  ,("Project version","6.8.2")
  ,("Booter version","6.8.1")
  ,("Stage","2")
  ,("Interface file version","6")
  ,("Have interpreter","YES")
  ,("Object splitting","YES")
  ,("Have native code generator","NO")
  ,("Support SMP","YES")
  ,("Unregisterised","NO")
  ,("Tables next to code","YES")
  ,("Win32 DLLs","")
  ,("RTS ways"," debug  thr thr_p thr_debug")
  ,("Leading underscore","NO")
  ]

Cheers Christian