I've been considering my options as far as C++ encryption libraries lately. One that I've looked at uses -O3 and another -O2 both on Linux. And the bzip2 compression lib on Linux uses -O2. I use -O2 on both Linux and Windows in my library. I think -O2 on Linux is not full tilt optimization, but on Windows it is. What suggestions do you have regarding optimization settings for library code? Should I turn down the optimization on the Windows side in my lib? Thanks in advance.


Brian Wood
Ebenezer Enterprises
http://webEbenezer.net

Optimization levels do not have to be homogeneous across the binary. You can compile different parts of your project with different optimization levels just fine.

I'd suggest optimizing for size by default. Any performance critical code (which is probably only a handful of files) should use the best settings determined from profiling with various options.

That's because outside of tight loops small code usually performs well, because it tends to reduce cache misses. You may not notice this benefit with a small test program though.

Quote:Original post by ApochPiQ
Why would you change your optimizations on Windows based on a lack of convention for optimization levels on Linux?

I don't follow your reasoning...

I'm thinking that using O3 on Linux is overly aggressive (especially in an encryption library with it's heavy math component) and that to be more consistent I should maybe use O1 on Windows. I know that bugs that result from compiler optimization bugs are often difficult to trace and so I may do myself and users a favor by being conservative with the optimization. I think some might suggest to turn it down even further than O2 on Linux although I haven't found any examples of that yet.

Quote:Original post by Steve132
Optimization levels do not have to be homogeneous across the binary. You can compile different parts of your project with different optimization levels just fine.

Right, but I've heard in another forum a suggestion to turn the optimization off and only turn it on where needed and this will save you some grief. I believe after reading that I only partly took it to heart and turned my optimization down from O3 to O2 on Linux. I didn't make any change to the Windows side and now it seems to be more consistent I should turn the Windows optimization down to O1.

The encryption library that has the O3 setting is undergoing frequent changes and it seems to me like it would do the author well to at least turn it down to O2. I'm still considering using the O3 encryption library but have asked the author if he would be willing to turn that down. If he doesn't I feel like I might have users running into problems with my software and I could spend long weeks tracking down the problem to a compiler optimization bug and what would I gain from that? Telling my users to edit the encryption library's makefile(s) and turn it down themselves isn't very appealing to me, but it is an option.

Quote:Original post by ApochPiQ
This depends a lot on the compiler you're using. In some situations, O3 is considered the "experimental" optimization level; anything below that is considered perfectly safe and compiler bugs are exceedingly unlikely. I would be shocked if your code is sophisticated enough to trigger an as-yet-undetected compiler bug in the non-experimental optimization levels.

It isn't just my library that I'm thinking about. It is the encryption library as well. I see the non-experimental optimization levels as a continuum with the highest such level being the most likely to still have problems.