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> CF exists but no linker is going to silently do it behind your back without an explicit directive, Those explicit directives might be more implicit than you
by maccard 4y ago
> CF exists but no linker is going to silently do it behind your back without an explicit directive,
Those explicit directives might be more implicit than you think. A linker will likely fold functions declared as inline. Template functions and template classes are implicitly inline, so for example, all uses of std::vector<std::string> will (likely) be implicitly folded together.
- amelius 4y agoAren't these folded by the compiler already?
- maccard 4y agoNot if they're compiled by separate invocations of the compiler. If a.cpp and b.cpp both have a vector<string> and are compiled independently, the first tool that actually gets to see them both is likely a linker (or archiver but that's a glorified zip tool)
- amelius 4y agoOk, but if these functions are inlined, would a linker then be able to fold these definitions? (Or are you assuming that a debug flag is used so that all inlined functions are not really inlined by the compiler?)
- jeffbee 4y agoOK but removing functions that are identical and that have the same name is not "identical code folding". ICF is removing functions that have identical bodies and different names.