cargo-llvm-lines

This tool measures the number and size of instantiations of each generic function in a program, indicating which parts of your code offer the highest leverage in improving compilation metrics.

Generic functions in Rust can be instantiated multiple times, so they can disproportionately affect compile time, compiler memory usage, and the size of compiled executables.

Installation

Install with cargo install cargo-llvm-lines.

Output

Example output from running cargo llvm-lines on its own codebase:

$ cargo llvm-lines | head -20

  Lines                Copies              Function name
  -----                ------              -------------
  51637                1222                (TOTAL)
   2240 (4.3%,  4.3%)     1 (0.1%,  0.1%)  <cargo_llvm_lines::opts::LlvmLines as clap_builder::derive::Args>::augment_args
   1190 (2.3%,  6.6%)     1 (0.1%,  0.2%)  <cargo_llvm_lines::opts::LlvmLines as clap_builder::derive::FromArgMatches>::from_arg_matches_mut
   1005 (1.9%,  8.6%)     3 (0.2%,  0.4%)  alloc::raw_vec::RawVec<T,A>::grow_amortized
    973 (1.9%, 10.5%)     7 (0.6%,  1.0%)  clap_builder::parser::matches::arg_matches::ArgMatches::try_remove_arg_t
    939 (1.8%, 12.3%)     7 (0.6%,  1.6%)  alloc::sync::Arc<T>::try_unwrap
    935 (1.8%, 14.1%)     6 (0.5%,  2.0%)  <alloc::vec::Vec<T> as alloc::vec::spec_from_iter_nested::SpecFromIterNested<T,I>>::from_iter
    861 (1.7%, 15.8%)     7 (0.6%,  2.6%)  alloc::sync::Arc<dyn core::any::Any+core::marker::Send+core::marker::Sync>::downcast
    761 (1.5%, 17.2%)     5 (0.4%,  3.0%)  alloc::vec::Vec<T,A>::extend_desugared
    638 (1.2%, 18.5%)     1 (0.1%,  3.1%)  cargo_llvm_lines::table::print
    599 (1.2%, 19.6%)    16 (1.3%,  4.4%)  core::option::Option<T>::ok_or_else
    592 (1.1%, 20.8%)     2 (0.2%,  4.6%)  core::slice::sort::merge
    574 (1.1%, 21.9%)     2 (0.2%,  4.7%)  core::slice::sort::merge_sort
    561 (1.1%, 23.0%)     7 (0.6%,  5.3%)  clap_builder::parser::matches::any_value::AnyValue::downcast_into
    556 (1.1%, 24.1%)     4 (0.3%,  5.6%)  <core::slice::iter::Iter<T> as core::iter::traits::iterator::Iterator>::next
    541 (1.0%, 25.1%)    16 (1.3%,  7.0%)  core::option::Option<T>::map
    536 (1.0%, 26.1%)     8 (0.7%,  7.6%)  <alloc::sync::Weak<T> as core::ops::drop::Drop>::drop
    533 (1.0%, 27.2%)     1 (0.1%,  7.7%)  core::str::pattern::simd_contains

There is one line per function with three columns of output:

Total number of lines of LLVM IR generated across all instantiations of the function (plus the percentage of the total and the cumulative percentage of all functions so far).
Number of instantiations of the function (plus the percentage of the total and the cumulative percentage of all functions so far). For a generic function, the number of instantiations is roughly the number of distinct combinations of generic type parameters it is called with.
Name of the function.

Multicrate Projects

Interpreting the output in the presence of multiple crates and generics can be tricky. cargo llvm-lines only shows the contribution of the root crate; dependencies are not included. To assess the contribution of an intermediate crate, use the -p flag:

$ cargo llvm-lines -p some-dependency

Note however, that Rust generics are monomorphised — a generic function will be accounted for in the crates that use it, rather than in the defining crate.

There is a trick to get a holistic view: enabling link time optimization causes all code generation to happen in the root crate. So you can use the following invocation to get a full picture:

$ CARGO_PROFILE_RELEASE_LTO=fat cargo llvm-lines --release

Acknowledgements

Based on a suggestion from @eddyb on how to count monomorphized functions in order to debug compiler memory usage, executable size and compile time.

<eddyb> unoptimized LLVM IR
<eddyb> first used grep '^define' to get only the lines defining function bodies
<eddyb> then regex replace in my editor to remove everything before @ and everything after (
<eddyb> then sort | uniq -c

License