5l, 6l, 8l: omit symbols for type, string, go.string
Much of the bulk of Go binaries is the symbol tables,
which give a name to every C string, Go string,
and reflection type symbol. These names are not worth
much other than seeing what's where in a binary.
This CL deletes all those names from the symbol table,
instead aggregating the symbols into contiguous blocks
and giving them the names "string.*", "go.string.*", and "type.*".
Before:
$ 6nm $(which godoc.old) | sort | grep ' string\.' | tail -10
59eda4 D string."
aa87ca22be8b05378eb1c71...
59ee08 D string."
b3312fa7e23ee7e4988e056...
59ee6c D string."func(*token.FileSet, st...
59eed0 D string."func(io.Writer, []uint8...
59ef34 D string."func(*tls.Config, *tls....
59ef98 D string."func(*bool, **template....
59effc D string."method(p *printer.print...
59f060 D string."method(S *scanner.Scann...
59f12c D string."func(*struct { begin in...
59f194 D string."method(ka *tls.ecdheRSA...
$
After:
$ 6nm $(which godoc) | sort | grep ' string\.' | tail -10
5e6a30 D string.*
$
Those names in the "Before" are truncated for the CL.
In the real binary they are the complete string, up to
a certain length, or else a unique identifier.
The same applies to the type and go.string symbols.
Removing the names cuts godoc by more than half:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 rsc rsc
9153405 2011-03-07 23:19 godoc.old
-rwxr-xr-x 1 rsc rsc
4290071 2011-03-07 23:19 godoc
For what it's worth, only 80% of what's left gets loaded
into memory; the other 20% is dwarf debugging information
only ever accessed by gdb:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 rsc rsc
3397787 2011-03-07 23:19 godoc.nodwarf
R=r, cw
CC=golang-dev
https://golang.org/cl/
4245072