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c++mingwcompiler-optimizationobjdump

Should the HAS_DEBUG flag appear in release g++ executable?

I'm a college student make some search in tips that increase the C++ performance.

And I was inspecting my "release" (compiler optimized) executable with the GCC tools. When I use the objdump, it displayed the file headers:

C:\Users\Nicobook\Uni\TCC\TCCII\Fontes\Códigos\teste>c:\MinGW32\bin\objdump.exe -f main.exe    
main.exe:     file format pei-i386
architecture: i386, flags 0x0000013a:
EXEC_P, HAS_DEBUG, HAS_SYMS, HAS_LOCALS, D_PAGED
start address 0x004014f0

There's a flag HAS_DEBUG, should it have? I'm measuring the runtime with optimizations enabled (I hope, see below in G++ flags), so I wanted the most optimized binary, but I think there's debug information on it. There is a way that I can remove the debug information?

I'm using MinGW32, G++ 4.8.1 and OBJDUMP 2.23.52. I use the following flags on G++:

C:\Users\Nicobook\Uni\TCC\TCCII\Fontes\Códigos\teste>c:\MinGW32\bin\g++.exe -O3 -Wall -Wextra -pedantic-errors -ansi --std=c++11 -o main.exe main.cpp

The main.cpp is a 'hello world' test program, not which I was measuring but with the same debug flag. Thanks in advance...

Solution

  • To remove all the extraneous sections in the file you need to strip it. Just do strip main.exe to accomplish this.

    Alternatively you can link your code with the -s flag, which accomplishes the same thing. If you're compiling from .cpp -> .exe directly (e.g. with your command line) then putting it into that command line will accomplish it.