Excessive exception size cost ...

[Caolán McNamara]

On Thu, 2012-03-08 at 17:05 +0000, Michael Meeks wrote:
> 	So - because of the expert skepticism of my estimate of where the
> wasteage is: ie. exception unwind tables, I re-ran my relocstats.pl tool
> (which I've checked in here):

So, here's my numbers.

Firstly x86_64 product-mode, no symbols, code-as-it-is-in-master

 code            140465kb - 40%
 exceptions      49501kb - 14%
 Total: 358418576 bytes

Then with relocstat-no-inline.patch applied to add additional
rtl_string2UString_throw vs rtl_string2UString etc entry points in order
to extract the "if (pData == 0) throw bad_alloc;" out from the inline
OUString constructors and into standalone functions which are allowed to
throw.

 code            140273kb - 40%
 exceptions      49485kb - 14%
 Total: 358116559 bytes

So, a total reduction in size of 294k bytes with that patch applied.
a 192k reduction in code-section-size

Then with relocstat.no-throws.patch applied instead to simply delete the
std::bad_alloc throws

 code            139542kb - 40%
 exceptions      48011kb - 14%
 Total: 356163070 bytes

which makes a far more hefty 2000k over-all reduction with that patch
applied instead. A 923k reduction in code-section-size.

> 	Perhaps what is more frightening, is the sheer weight of the exception
> information: we have fourty-eight (48) Mb of exception unwind
> information vs. 75Mb of cod

They are frighteningly huge alright. On the other hand, presumably those
sections aren't loaded unless an exception actually gets thrown (?) so
does their presence matter performance-wise.

> 	It is also a markedly higher proportion than mozilla:

Maybe large bits of mozilla are compiled without exceptions ?,
historically at least given https://developer.mozilla.org/en/C
++_Portability_Guide#Don%27t_use_exceptions exceptions seems to have
been avoided.

> 	We can also see that of the two potential causes of bloat removal of
> not doing this:
> 
> 	a) not in-lining:
> 
> 		if (error_return) throw ::std::bad_alloc();