Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think!snorkelwacker!apple!oracle!news
From: gstein@oracle.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: MPW compiler bugs
Message-ID: <1990Feb16.012322.19895@oracle.com>
Date: 16 Feb 90 01:23:22 GMT
Sender: news@oracle.com
Reply-To: gstein@oracle.com ()
Organization: Oracle Corporation, Belmont, CA
Lines: 37

Steve Bollinger writes:
>Greg Stein writes:
>John, I will agree with you, though, about the Linker.  Think C
>>includes code a whole file at a time -- it won't pick out individual
>>routines from a file.  MPW C will do this.  What I don't get is why
>>Think C hasn't changed this by now -- they've had a few versions to do
>>it.  Heck, in high school when I wrote the Rascal compiler for the
>>Mac, I wrote a linker that did dead code analysis and picked out a
>>routine at a time.  Surely, Mike Kahl could do it.
>
>Think C DOES indeed remove dead code, ever since version 3.0.  It doesn't seem
>to do quite as good a job as MPW 3.0, but a good job none the less.  To
>remove dead code, just check the 'Smart Link' check box when you build your
>app/DA/whatever.  You can go out and prove it to yourself by writing a
>program which uses one small routine from the ANSI library, and building it to
>disk.  Whereas the ANSI library is 27K long, your program will come out to
>about 5 or 6K.
>

Hmm...

I had thought that Think C works on a file by file basis.  If you
include a routine from a file, the WHOLE file is pulled in.  Note,
though, that this doesn't count for projects/libraries: in these it
picks the file out of the project.  As for the ANSI library, Think has
split up the source into a bunch of tiny files.  Since you use one
routine, you get one (little) file.  I know that using "Run..."
doesn't do any dead code analysis and you pick up whole libraries/
projects (e.g. MacTraps), but building is different.

Maybe I'm brain dead and they've fixed this.  Unfortunately, I have to
wait until I get home to check cuz we don't use Think C here at work :-(

Happy hacking...
Greg Stein	-- This posting bears no relation to my employer
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