Huge debugging binaries after switching from C++ Sun Studio 11 to 12u1

Question

Hello
I changed the compiler in our C++ project from Sun Studio 11 to Sun Studio 12u1 (12u3 is currently not available).
The only change on the command line I had to do was replacing -xarch=v9 with -m64.
The command line now is "CC -c -g -features=rtti -mt -KPIC -w -staticlib=Cstd,Crun -m64  ...".
Our static libraries are now 50% bigger, the executables are 10x bigger (200 MB to now 2 GB!!!).
This also affected the debugger sessions, they are slow and the print statement only produces internal errors.
I think this is due to the size of the binaries.
Please help to reduce the binary size.
Best regards
Hans

Answer 1

The debug data format changed between Studio 11 and 12u1 from Sun stabs to the industry-standard dwarf format. (The Studio 12u1 C++ Users Guide is incorrect where it says stabs is the default format.)
The change in debug format has two consequences:
1. Debug data is typically 10-15% larger, due to increased information about the program being available (a major reason for the change).
2. Whereas stabs data resides in the .o files with only index information in the executable program, all the dwarf data is copied into the executable. With dwarf, you can fully debug the program without access to the .o files that make up the program.
To verify this reason for the larger binaries, try building your program using Studio 11, adding the -xs option. This option causes the stabs to be copied into the executable program. You should find the binaries are similar in size compared to building with Studio 12u1. If this is not the case, we'll need to dig deeper.
You can revert to using stabs by adding the option -xdebugformat=stabs to every compile and link command (CC or cc).
In a future version of Studio, we plan to provide an option to leave dwarf data in the .o files with only index information in the executable, so that you can have a smaller executable when you don't mind requiring access to the .o files in order to debug.
By the way, we do not recommend static linking of libCstd and libCrun. Unless you have a particular reason for linking the static libraries, we recommend the default dynamic linking.