

Shared Library Reduction Tool
-----------------------------

The motivation for this tool was the understanding that the ACE & TAO
libraries were to be linked with the VxWorks kernel to allow multiple
applications to be run simultaneously with a minimum of footprint
consumed. Ordinarily a choice is made between static linking
applications, where each application gets only the object modules
needed, and shared object linkage, where multiple applications share
access to full libraries.  Frequently a shared library will contain
code and data which is not used by any of the applications in a
particular configuration. The Shared Library Reduction Tool builds
libraries that include only the modules needed to support a specified
set of applications.

The analysis is performed very late in the application implementation,
allowing the system implementors the freedom to use whatever TAO & ACE
components are needed. Once an application is built and running, its
shared object need may be evaluated.  The evaluation is straight
forward. Run the soreduce program, passing the path to all of the
applications that will share the libraries. The soreduce program uses
the following steps to generate its results.

1. A list of undefined symbols and shared libraries is built by
   invoking the ldd and nm commands on each application. For now,
   soreduce assumes the GNU variant of these tools.

2. For each shared library, soreduce tries to invoke nm on each of the
   intermediate object files used to build the library. It is
   important that target library directory has a current .shobj
   subdirectory.

3. The list of undefined symbols is traversed. For each entry in the list, the
   modules loaded from step 2 are examined to look for a matching
   symbol. When one is found, the target symbol, and any others
   satisfied by the module are removed from the list, and any
   undefined symbols in the module are added to the list.  This
   process is repeated until the entire list of undefined symbols is
   traversed without change.

4. MPC files are generated. Rather than invoking the linker directly, an mpc
   file is generated that may be used to build the libs. With these
   mpc files, the actual library will be named (orig)_subset.

Analysis Artifacts
------------------

Development of the shared library reduction tool also provided a
secondary benefit. It is able to output usage metrics for the various
modules, which may be useful for directing further hand-crafted
reduction efforts. Using the GNU nm with more verbose output, it is
possible to determine the first function using a given undefined
symbol. While it is not (yet) possible to automate the refactoring of
code based on this analysis, this information can provide a road map
for breaking a single module into two or a few that will result in
fewer incidental dependancies overall.  However this speculation has
not been tested.

Test results
------------

Running soreduce providing itself as the sole client. The soreduce
application is built on top of ACE, using just a few of ACE's
features. Here is the output:

bash$ ./soreduce soreduce
discovering libraries
loading object modules
Libs subject to analysis:
  ACE
Starting analysis
pass 0, undef count = 69
pass 1, undef count = 207
pass 2, undef count = 278
pass 3, undef count = 271
pass 4, undef count = 245
pass 5, undef count = 235
Writing results
Making directory /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/ace/usage_metrics
ACE: 61 out of 210 modules required
writing file /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/ace/ACE_subset.mpc
Done.

The size of libACE.so before rebuilding:

bash$ size libACE.so
   text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
2361958	 498760	  12516	2873234	 2bd792	libACE.so

and after:

bash$ size libACE_subset.so
   text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
 987167	 207452	   7580	1202199	 125817	libACE_subset.so


2873234 - 1202199 = 1671035 bytes eliminated, a 58.2% reduction

Here is another example, using the Naming Service, and its simple test
client.  Note that the orbsvcs results are bogus, the libraries are
already fairly well factored so that the additional subsetting by
soreduce is not effective. Also, due to the layout of the orbsvcs
library source directory, the tool may not generate valid mpc files.

bash$ $ACE_ROOT/apps/soreduce/soreduce Naming_Service/Naming_Service tests/Simple_Naming/client
discovering libraries
loading object modules
Libs subject to analysis:
  TAO_CosNaming
  TAO_Svc_Utils
  TAO_IORTable
  TAO_PortableServer
  TAO
  ACE
Starting analysis
pass 0, undef count = 339
pass 1, undef count = 580
pass 2, undef count = 438
pass 3, undef count = 278
pass 4, undef count = 244
pass 5, undef count = 246
pass 6, undef count = 242
Writing results
Making directory /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/TAO/orbsvcs/orbsvcs/usage_metrics
TAO_CosNaming: 11 out of 256 modules required
writing file /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/TAO/orbsvcs/orbsvcs/TAO_CosNaming_subset.mpc
Making directory /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/TAO/orbsvcs/orbsvcs/usage_metrics
TAO_Svc_Utils: 8 out of 256 modules required
writing file /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/TAO/orbsvcs/orbsvcs/TAO_Svc_Utils_subset.mpc
Making directory /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/TAO/tao/IORTable/usage_metrics
TAO_IORTable: 4 out of 4 modules required
writing file /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/TAO/tao/IORTable/TAO_IORTable_subset.mpc
Making directory /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/TAO/tao/PortableServer/usage_metrics
TAO_PortableServer: 26 out of 29 modules required
writing file /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/TAO/tao/PortableServer/TAO_PortableServer_subset.mpc
Making directory /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/TAO/tao/usage_metrics
TAO: 160 out of 191 modules required
writing file /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/TAO/tao/TAO_subset.mpc
Making directory /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/ace/usage_metrics
ACE: 75 out of 210 modules required
writing file /opt/wustl/ACE_wrappers/build/native/ace/ACE_subset.mpc
Done.

Size before & after:
   text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
2361958	 498760	  12516	2873234	 2bd792	libACE.so
3432206	 704188	  30992	4167386	 3f96da	libTAO.so
1931145	 326632	   7528	2265305	 2290d9	libTAO_PortableServer.so
  76561	  12504	    364	  89429	  15d55	libTAO_IORTable.so


Sum: 9395354


   text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
1340017	 275440	   8140	1623597	 18c62d	libACE_subset.so
3131226	 643816	  27984	3803026	 3a0792	libTAO_subset.so
1845515	 308812	   6896	2161223	 20fa47	libTAO_PortableServer_subset.so
  76603	  12508	    364	  89475	  15d83	libTAO_IORTable_subset.so

Sum: 7677321

Savings: 1718033 or 18.3%
