objdump -d --line-numbers performance question

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Emile,

> Looking at elf_find_function() it jumps out that it's doing a linear
> search through the entire set of symbols every time it's called.  But
> show_line() has access to find_symbol_for_address which does a binary
> search on a sorted set of symbols.
> 
> So.  The attached patch uses find_symbol_for_address() in show_line(),
> and then passes down a fake asymbol** list consisting of just the found
> symbol and a null end marker.  So far it always produces identical
> 'objdump -d --line-numbers' output for me as the stock objdump, but my
> run time on one representative file has gone from ~2 hours to ~4
> minutes.
> 
> Does this look right?  If not, can anyone give me some pointers on the
> right way to try to optimize things?

Actually this looks like a very good idea.  I only have two improvements 
to suggest:

   1. Be paranoid.  If the call to bfd_find_nearest_line() fails to find 
the desired information with the abbreviated symbol table then it should 
be re-called with the full symbol table.

   2. Use the latest sources.  The 2.15 release is not going to have any 
new features added to it, so it is best to produce a patch against the 
latest sources in the binutils CVS repository.

To that end, please could you try out the attached patch which is meant 
to address both of these points.  If you can confirm that it does still 
work (and reduce the search times) then I will commit it to the sources.

Cheers
   Nick



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