wxMSW Choose a compiler : Speed, Compile times and file sizes


Running with wxWidgets 2.5.3 (11 Oct 04) I built the wxMSW library and two programs to provide comparative data on file sizes and build times for the compilers I have available on an XP home box:
 
Times: I built the wxMSW library, wxWidgets own minimal sample and wxHatch (a program of resonable complexity). With wxHatch, I then forced a rebuild of the second largest file and relinked. For gcc, I also timed the configure process

Sizes: The size of the minimal program and of wxHatch are shown, with the saving between debug and release builds. Note that gcc and watcom provide strip utilites to reduce te size of the exe file

Speed: The time to scan the wxHatch sources for all the classes and their methods was measured (code in wxHatch CVS, trchild.cpp TreeChild constructor). In this test, all the files were loaded into memory before the string scan was begun

Time to compile in debug build

The Digital Mars makefiles in the 2.5.3 release do not support precompiled headers, the replacement here was used in these tests
Makefile.gcc has not yet been built


Time in min:s

Borland 5.5

Open Watcom 1.3

Gcc 3.2 (makefile.gcc)

Gcc 3.2 (configure in MSYS shell)

Visual C 6

Digital Mars
library

configure

N/A

N/A

N/A

7:36

N/A

N/A

make

4:48
 		16:04
47:14
 		7:31
 		2:34
wxhatch

make

1:42
 		3:16
7:28
 		2:20
 		1:35

recompile 1 file & relink

 0:14
 		0:48
2:40
 		0:08
 		0:07

Sizes in Mbytes

 Default builds, except for


Size is in Mbytes

Borland 5.5

Open Watcom 1.1

Gcc 3.2 (makefile.gcc)

Gcc 3.2 (configure)
Visual C 6 		Visual C 2003

Digital Mars

Total Library
size

debug

 54
106
 		360
 		356
 		36
 		N/A
 		31

release
 		18.6
 		30.2
 		18
 		15
 		19.6
 		23
 		N/A

Minimal

 before strip N/A 27
 		22
 		19
 		N/A N/A
 		N/A

debug

 2.7
 		3.7
 		2.1
 		1.9
 		2.0
 		2.0
 		6.7

release

 2.4
 		1.7
 		3.4
 		2.5
 		0.8
 		0.8
 		N/A

wxhatch

 before strip N/A 49
 		N/A
 		34
 		N/A N/A
 		N/A

debug 4.8
 		8.7
 		N/A
 		4.8
 		4.8
 		4.6
 		14.6

release

 4.9 (yes bigger)
 		4.4
 		7.0
 		5.9
 		2.7
 		2.6
 		N/A
 

Speed of execution

(times vary by about 10% on replicate runs)
 

Time to scan (ms)

Borland 5.5

Open Watcom 1.1

Gcc 3.2 (makefile.gcc)

Gcc 3.2 (configure)

Visual C 6

 Visual C 2003

Digital Mars

wxhatch

debug

 2266
 		11922
 		N/A
 		2828
 		4000
 		2765
 3812

release

 1313
 		6578
 		2062
 		2031
 		1672
 		1546
 N/A
 
With Borland, version 2.4.2 of wxWidgets took 1625 and 1891ms in release and debug modes for this scan

Other details of the 2.4 series file size and compile times, (timed on the same hardware) are here
chris elliott,  17 Oct 04