For now Kotlin Native generates order of magnitude bigger an

Question

For now Kotlin Native generates order of magnitude bigger and slower code compared to plain C equivalent

napperley · Answer

How much bigger code runtime and standard lib size is Kotlin Native than C Very important to have some basic Kotlin Native CLI profiling tools to measure performance in a number of different areas Some of the areas covered by the profiling tools would include code size as mentioned point up memory RAM consumption separated by stack heap and element type classes objects variables constants etc CPU usage number of times the Kotlin Native program blocks and how long each block occurs concurrency

msink · Answer

Last time I measured it was approx 20x times bigger

msink · Answer

Not counting stdlib just code generated by compiler

olonho · Answer

I am not sure if this statement is correct so would suggest people to perform their own measurements

msink · Answer

Ok fresh measurement <https github com msink kotlin blink>

msink · Answer

Ok fresh measurement <https github com msink kotlin blink> Result 11 3 times bigger

nish · Answer

Does Konan do any dead code elimination

napperley · Answer

Does the upcoming Kotlin Native benchmark tools cover code size

napperley · Answer

Real need to have a basic Kotlin Native sample which is suitable as a reference point for benchmarks incl code size

msink · Answer

That blink led sample is quite real it s like hello world for microcontrollers

napperley · Answer

What is the target hw is it targeting the Rpi Does the Kotlin code size include the Kotlin Native runtime and std lib

msink · Answer

No I compiled it on windows host for windows target x86 64 For another targets both sizes will change so difference will be the same more or less And no I do not count stdlib so difference really is even worse

olonho · Answer

guess this kind of measurement is close to useless when comparing text segment for trivial C and Kotlin programs probably bigger size application having data structures and computations shall be compared

msink · Answer

what data structures it counts only size of main 89 bytes and Konan start 1004 bytes

olonho · Answer

usually maps list sets are considered data structures

msink · Answer

did you see that repository disassemled listings of relevant procedures do not include any of this maps sets etc

olonho · Answer

sure but the point is that to meaningfully compare size of programs they have to do something valuable for example manipulate with some data structures

msink · Answer

microcontrollers do not manipulate that structures it manipulate io ports

msink · Answer

Question was is K N usable in Ucs answer is no for now In many other use cases answer is different of course

napperley · Answer

Isn t a language unusable without a standard lib covers all basic data types basic debugging via print basic collection functionality etc

napperley · Answer

There are other languages like Python via Micro Python which have been successfully ported to uCs Kotlin SHOULD be portable to some ARM based uCs with the right changes under the hood in due time clock1 Put it this way since JS can run on some uCs astonished runner it is possible to write some embedded programs using a high level language which will run on some uCs

napperley · Answer

My point about the need for Kotlin Native profiling tools still stands and has been validated with some of the previous messages Currently there is no easy accurate way to determine resource usage of a Kotlin Native program eg CPU usage RAM used code size It is like navigating a room in the dark dark sunglasses inaccurate which when translated to Kotlin Native development isn t a good way to determine if a Kotlin Native program is using too many resources or not guessing doesn t work well