Re: Weeding out unwanted include files

Sriram Srinivasan (sriram@tcs.com) wrote:
: I want to develop a tool that finds out which include files are
: useless, so as to reduce compile time.


: My idea was to keep track of all global declarations, such as macro
: definitions, typedefs etc, and then look for usage of these declarations.
: I would keep track of the include file dependencies, and identify those
: include files that are not being referred to at all.


Well, the following method lacks elegance, but might give you the
result you're after.


1) run mkdepnd to derive the list of header files that a given source
file depends on.


2) iteratively remove the #include of each file mentioned in mkdepend
list. If the file still compiles, leave that #include out, and
continue to iterate. Otherwise, add the #include back in and
try removing the next mentioned header file, and continue to iterate.


This method probably works best if you use a strict ANSI compiler
that will complain if the prototype for a gaiven routine definition
is missing. You may have to consider type mismatch warnings as
"fatal" also.


This method won't give an optimal arrangement of #includes, but
may at least give a simple method for removing unwanted #include files.
--
| Gary Funck gary@intrepid.com
| Intrepid Technology Inc., Mountain View CA (415) 964-8135
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