[gentoo-user] bloated by gcc

[Jorge Almeida]

I'm having a somewhat disgusting issue on my Gentoo: binaries are
unaccountably large.

I'm talking about C programs of my own, so no version related issues
whatsoever. The computer is a core i3 with a 32 bit system.

Example, for the same program:

10275 B on an atom running Slackware 14.1 (gcc 4.8.2)
5896 B (same, stripped with strip --strip-unneeded)

11675 B on i3, Gentoo, gcc 4.8.3 (with default gcc it was worse)
9704 B stripped

8207 B on *the same i3 box* running LFS (gcc 4.9.1)
5768 B stripped

When compiling against dietlibc, the difference is even more shocking
(almost double size in Gentoo after stripping).

Compiled with:
gcc -Os -march=i686  -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -Wall -pedantic
-fdata-sections -ffunction-sections -Wl,--gc-sections
-fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables -std=c99

Gentoo:
$ gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
COLLECT_GCC=/usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu/gcc-bin/4.8.3/gcc
COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/usr/libexec/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.8.3/lto-wrapper
Target: i686-pc-linux-gnu
Configured with:
/var/tmp/portage/sys-devel/gcc-4.8.3/work/gcc-4.8.3/configure
--host=i686-pc-linux-gnu --build=i686-pc-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr
--bindir=/usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu/gcc-bin/4.8.3
--includedir=/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.8.3/include
--datadir=/usr/share/gcc-data/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.8.3
--mandir=/usr/share/gcc-data/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.8.3/man
--infodir=/usr/share/gcc-data/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.8.3/info
--with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.8.3/include/g++-v4
--with-python-dir=/share/gcc-data/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.8.3/python
--enable-languages=c,c++,fortran --enable-obsolete --enable-secureplt
--disable-werror --with-system-zlib --disable-nls
--enable-checking=release --with-bugurl=https://bugs.gentoo.org/
--with-pkgversion='Gentoo 4.8.3' --enable-libstdcxx-time
--enable-shared --enable-threads=posix --enable-__cxa_atexit
--enable-clocale=gnu --disable-multilib --disable-altivec
--disable-fixed-point --with-arch=i686 --enable-targets=all
--disable-libgcj --enable-libgomp --disable-libmudflap
--disable-libssp --enable-lto --without-cloog
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.8.3 (Gentoo 4.8.3)

LFS:
##  gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
COLLECT_GCC=gcc
COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/usr/libexec/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.9.1/lto-wrapper
Target: i686-pc-linux-gnu
Configured with: ../gcc-4.9.1/configure --prefix=/usr
--enable-languages=c,c++ --disable-multilib --disable-bootstrap
--with-system-zlib
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.9.1 (GCC)

Slackware:
Reading specs from /slash/usr/bin/../lib/gcc/i486-slackware-linux/4.8.2/specs
COLLECT_GCC=gcc
COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/slash/usr/bin/../libexec/gcc/i486-slackware-linux/4.8.2/lto-wrapper
Target: i486-slackware-linux
Configured with: ../gcc-4.8.2/configure --prefix=/usr
--libdir=/usr/lib --mandir=/usr/man --infodir=/usr/info
--enable-shared --enable-bootstrap
--enable-languages=ada,c,c++,fortran,go,java,lto,objc
--enable-threads=posix --enable-checking=release --enable-objc-gc
--with-system-zlib --with-python-dir=/lib/python2.7/site-packages
--disable-libunwind-exceptions --enable-__cxa_atexit --enable-libssp
--enable-lto --with-gnu-ld --verbose --enable-java-home
--with-java-home=/usr/lib/jvm/jre --with-jvm-root-dir=/usr/lib/jvm
--with-jvm-jar-dir=/usr/lib/jvm/jvm-exports --with-arch-directory=i386
--with-antlr-jar=/root/slackware-current/source/d/gcc/antlr-runtime-3.4.jar
--enable-java-awt=gtk --disable-gtktest --with-arch=i486
--target=i486-slackware-linux --build=i486-slackware-linux
--host=i486-slackware-linux
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.8.2 (GCC)

I'm not elfwise, but I could post something to google drive if needed.

TIA

Jorge Almeida