Enable Link-Time Optimization (LTO)

[zamazan4ik]

Hi!

I noticed that in the Cargo.toml file Link-Time Optimization (LTO) for the project is not enabled. I suggest switching it on since it will reduce the binary size (always a good thing to have) and will likely improve the application's performance a bit (in this case, it's not critical at all but anyway).

I suggest enabling LTO only for the Release builds so as not to sacrifice the developers' experience while working on the project since LTO consumes an additional amount of time to finish the compilation routine. If you think that a regular Release build should not be affected by such a change as well, then I suggest adding an additional dist or release-lto profile where additionally to regular release optimizations LTO also will be added. Such a change simplifies life for maintainers and others interested in the project persons who want to build the most performant version of the application. Using ThinLTO also should help.

I already found a commit that has the following words:

It might be worth exploring if something like lto=thin could improve performance since it didn't meaningfully impact compile time or size any further, but that's TBD.

Maybe it's time to reconsider the decision ;)

Thank you.

[martinvonz]

I think @thoughtpolice knows most about this. Feel free to experiment with it and share the results. IMO, if it's a clear win in binary size and not a loss in runtime performance and at most a small loss in build speed, it seems reasonable to do.

[zamazan4ik]

I performed some quick benchmarks on the latest commit (main branch, 05c6d62c681598697d345e18f802f5e601dac1f7 commit, Fedora 40, Rustc 1.81):

• Release binary size: 21 Mib, build time: 1m 33s
• Release + lto = true: 19 Mib, build time: 2m 40s
• Release + lto = "thin": 22 Mib, build time: 1m 39s

What is the recommended way to measure the performance of the tool? I also want to compare performance between different LTO versions