ghc-7 produces 10 times bigger binaries on macs than ghc-6

[maeder]

see  http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/glasgow-haskell-users/2011-March/020146.html

echo main = putStrLn \"hello\" > H.hs
ghc --make -O -fforce-recomp H.hs
ls -lh H

This is also a problem on powerpc

[igloo]

This is probably because object splitting was turned off (#4013). It should be fixed with the HEAD provided you build with XCode >= 3.2. I'll leave the ticket open until that's confirmed.

[altaic]

The issue is still present in my build of HEAD (OSX 10.6 x86_64) from yesterday.

[maeder]

I can confirm that "ghc --info" shows ("Object splitting","YES") for ghc-6.12.3 and "NO" for ghc-7.0.2.

[altaic]

In my recent HEAD build with overly large binaries, ghc --info shows ("Object splitting supported","YES")

[simonmar]

Does this affect the platform release too?

[maeder]

Replying to altaic:

In my recent HEAD build with overly large binaries, ghc --info shows ("Object splitting supported","YES")

I've just recompiled ghc-7.0.2 with "Object splitting supported" (in config.mk.in) and now the hello binary has just "915K" and I observed no other problems.

[maeder]

Replying to simonmar:

Does this affect the platform release too?

I suppose so, it should be repacked.

[maeder]

 http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/agbkb/forschung/formal_methods/CoFI/hets/intel-mac/ghcs/ghc-7.0.2-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.bz2

is an experimental OS 10.6 64-bit distribution with object splitting and without sdk-stuff introduced by aclocal.m4. The hello binary has "1,1M" but is no longer linked against /usr/lib/libgcc_s.1.dylib.

  [("Project name","The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System")
 ,("Project version","7.0.2")
 ,("Booter version","6.10.4")
 ,("Stage","2")
 ,("Build platform","x86_64-apple-darwin")
 ,("Host platform","x86_64-apple-darwin")
 ,("Target platform","x86_64-apple-darwin")
 ,("Have interpreter","YES")
 ,("Object splitting","YES")
 ,("Have native code generator","YES")
 ,("Have llvm code generator","YES")
 ,("Support SMP","YES")
 ,("Unregisterised","NO")
 ,("Tables next to code","YES")
 ,("RTS ways","l debug  thr thr_debug thr_l thr_p ")
 ,("Leading underscore","YES")
 ,("Debug on","False")
 ,("LibDir","/Users/Shared/maeder/lib/ghc-7.0.2")
 ,("Global Package DB","/Users/Shared/maeder/lib/ghc-7.0.2/package.conf.d")
 ,("C compiler flags","[\"-m64\",\"-fno-stack-protector\"]")
 ,("Gcc Linker flags","[\"-m64\"]")
 ,("Ld Linker flags","[\"-arch\",\"x86_64\"]")
 ]

[altaic]

Replying to maeder:

I've just recompiled ghc-7.0.2 with "Object splitting supported" (in config.mk.in) and now the hello binary has just "915K" and I observed no other problems.

That's odd. I rebuilt ghc HEAD against OS X 10.6's SDK / Xcode 4, and the hello binary is now just 1.0M. With my build from the other day it was over 7M.

[igloo]

Maybe you had XCode < 3.2 before. Anyway, sounds like this is fixed in HEAD, so I'll close the ticket. Thanks everyone!