Re: Do we use -fno-omit-frame-pointers by accident?

Joe Schaefer wrote on Thu, Jun 18, 2026 at 06:46:15PM -0400: 
> Do you like it when dtrace generates symbolized stack traces? Then you want
> this flag.

To clarify, I want frame pointers.

Martin

> On Thu, Jun 18, 2026 at 4:54???PM Martin Cracauer <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > I was about to propose on BSDCan to turn on -fno-omit-frame-pointer
> > for the base system userland and most ports.[*]
> >
> > So I went benchmarking the performance impact.
> >
> > I discovered that CFLAGS+=-fno-omit-frame-pointer changes nothing
> > about our binaries and shared libraries.  CFLAGS+=-fomit-frame-pointer
> > makes them a little smaller.  So it looks like we default to having
> > frame pointers... somehow.  I verified in the compiler stdout that the
> > flags I set are in fact in effect.
> >
> > Sizes for 16-current 283959bbe0863917c4fc3200a92d1055a4c89bdc /bin/sh:
> >
> >    text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
> > - default:
> >  164503    3712    5520  173735   2a6a7
> > - -fomit-frame-pointer
> >  163831    3712    6192  173735   2a6a7
> > - -fno-omit-frame-pointer
> >  164503    3712    5520  173735   2a6a7
> >
> >
> > [*] The reason why I bring this up now is that Ubuntu is doing the
> > work for use of determining which pieces of software have actually too
> > high overhead with FPs.  Such as the CPython interpreter.  Depending
> > on further benchmarking the base userland this changes the
> > effort/benefit balance.
> >
> > More words here:
> >
> > https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17AGf6a0IxIzqcgd4-5FWdQhLzBV9DfLEhNTm-xL0vyc/edit?usp=sharing
> >
> > Martin
> > --
> > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
> > Martin Cracauer <[email protected]>   http://www.cons.org/cracauer/
> >
> >

-- 
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Martin Cracauer <[email protected]>   http://www.cons.org/cracauer/