Profiling the C++ compilation process

Question

I tend to write rather large templated header-only C++ libraries and my users commonly complain about compilation times. After thinking about the matter, it occurred to me that I have no idea where the time is going. Is there some simple way to profile the C++ compilation process with common compilers, such as g++, icc, and xlC? For instance, is it possible to get an idea of how much time is spent within each of the phases of C++ compilation?

Answer 1

For GCC there are debugging options to find how much time is spent within each of the phases of C++ compilation?

-Q Makes the compiler print out each function name as it is compiled, and print some statistics about each pass when it finishes.

-ftime-report Makes the compiler print some statistics about the time consumed by each pass when it finishes.

Passes are described in GCCINT 9: Passes and Files of the Compiler.

You can post output of g++ compilation of single source file with -v -ftime-report here to discuss it. There could be some help on the GCC mailing list.

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For compilers other than GCC (or GCC more ancient than 3.3.6) see the other options in this thread.