Re: RFC - size tool for kernel build system

[Robin Getz <rgetz@blackfin.uclinux.org>]

On Thu 9 Oct 2008 19:56, Tim Bird pondered:
> Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > The building blocks that would be useful are IMHO:
> > - a make target that generates a report for one kernel
> >   (like the checkstack or export_report targets)
> > - a script that compares two such reports and outputs the
> >   size differences
> > 
> > That's also easy to do, and if that's what's wanted I can send a patch 
> > that does it.
> 
> I took a stab at this with the attached two scripts.  These are
> not quite ready for prime time, but show the basic idea.
> I only have a partial list of subsystems, and am skipping the
> runtime data collection, for now.
> 
> I have only made the scripts, not any make targets for them.
> 
> I record all data into a flat namespace, which makes it easier to compare
> later.
> 
> > Everything else is IMHO overdesigned.
> One element of this design is the ability to configure
> the diff-size-report tool to watch only certain values, and to
> return a non-zero exit code under certain conditions.  This makes
> it possible to use the tool with git-bisect to find the source of
> a size regression. I believe Linus asked for something like this
> at the last kernel summit.
> 
> Without the use of the config file, diff-size-report is very
> to bloat-o-meter, but provides info about additional
> aggregate items (like subsystems and the full kernel).
> 
> Feedback is welcome.

This seems to still only look at the text section (only uses nm)? not data or 
other section sizes increasing?