From 471ca6b1ae7979acc0deb95eafc09e1fc4f83bd8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Sanket Kanjalkar Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2026 01:05:31 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] Tune release codegen for faster/smaller binaries (#9434) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Replaces #9424 with the same release-profile change on a branch in this repository so the review workflows can run. ## Summary Reduce release codegen units from 16 to 4 and enable thin link-time optimization (LTO). Local measurements show about **7% smaller binaries**, with a **14% increase in dependency-cached release rebuild time** (+3.1 seconds). Clean release build time was roughly flat. `codegen-units = 4` seems like a good balance. With thin LTO fixed, one unit cut stripped sizes a further 7–10%, but increased clean build time by 38% and cached release rebuild time by 67.5%. CPU and Activity trials showed no clear speedup. Fewer codegen units let LLVM optimize larger portions of each crate together. Lower counts typically favor runtime performance and smaller binaries over compilation speed. Thin LTO also enables optimization across crate boundaries. Runtime gains depend on the workload. Release keeps `opt-level = 3`, the highest numeric optimization level and Cargo's existing default. Development builds stay unchanged. Keep the custom `ci` profile at 16 codegen units with LTO off, preserving its existing settings. Sprig keeps its separate size-focused profile. CI jobs that use ordinary `--release` will use the new settings. These measurements cover `buzz` and `buzz-acp`, not the desktop bundle. The desktop app has its own Cargo workspace; its bundled CLI picks up this change after a pin update. Our end-to-end runtime trials were broadly flat; the measurements below demonstrate the size and build-time tradeoff. ### Related issue N/A — no duplicate release LTO/codegen PR found. This PR contains only the profile change and is independent of #9413. ### Testing #### Baseline versus four codegen units Compared identical source and lockfile at `b4de4479485fc3d57628ed509ed40c4278e63132`, using Rust 1.98.1 on an Apple M5 Max (18 cores, 128 GiB RAM). Both arms used `opt-level=3`, disabled incremental compilation and no compiler-cache wrapper. The baseline used LTO off and 16 codegen units; the candidate used thin LTO and four. | Median / artifact | Baseline | Thin LTO, 4 units | Change | | --- | ---: | ---: | ---: | | Clean release build (2 runs each) | 47.98 s | 46.71 s | -2.7% | | Dependency-cached release rebuild (3 each) | 22.55 s | 25.68 s | +13.9% | | No-op release build (5 each) | 0.469 s | 0.461 s | Roughly unchanged | | `buzz` executable | 14.516 MiB | 13.580 MiB | -6.4% | | `buzz-acp` executable | 14.580 MiB | 13.487 MiB | -7.5% | Build command: `cargo build --offline --locked --release -p buzz-acp -p buzz-cli --timings`. Set `CARGO_INCREMENTAL=0`, `CARGO_PROFILE_RELEASE_LTO=false|thin` and `CARGO_PROFILE_RELEASE_CODEGEN_UNITS=16|4` for each arm, with separate `CARGO_TARGET_DIR` directories. Clean runs used empty build directories in sequential ABBA order, with downloaded dependencies and filesystem caches warm. Rebuilds cleaned only `buzz-acp` and `buzz-cli` outside the timed region. Sizes are Cargo-built executables before the desktop packager's stripping step. Stripping copies with `xcrun strip -S -x` kept the size benefit: `buzz` fell from 12.550 to 11.805 MiB (-5.9%), and `buzz-acp` from 12.360 to 11.501 MiB (-7.0%). This does not measure a signed desktop installer. Both release executables passed `--help` smoke checks. Profile inspection confirmed the custom `ci` and `sprig` settings are unchanged. #### One codegen unit versus four A separate follow-up compared four versus one on `a314975ce7bf9aa00baebfef874b6e69474a95cf`, which includes the merged observer CPU/locking changes (#9381). Both arms used thin LTO, `opt-level=3`, the same Rust 1.98.1 toolchain and hardware, and identical source and lockfile. This is a separate source snapshot from the first comparison; the tables should not be combined into a three-arm comparison. | Median / artifact | Thin LTO, 4 units | Thin LTO, 1 unit | Change | | --- | ---: | ---: | ---: | | Clean release build (2 runs each) | 45.93 s | 63.35 s | +37.9% | | Dependency-cached release rebuild (3 each) | 22.38 s | 37.48 s | +67.5% | | Stripped `buzz` | 11.789 MiB | 10.923 MiB | -7.3% | | Stripped `buzz-acp` | 11.485 MiB | 10.320 MiB | -10.1% | | Activity p95 latency (median of 5 runs each) | 952 ms | 961 ms | No clear change | Both sets of binaries were stripped identically with `xcrun strip -S -x`. Repeat the build command above with `CARGO_PROFILE_RELEASE_LTO=thin` and `CARGO_PROFILE_RELEASE_CODEGEN_UNITS=4` or `1`, retaining the same cache and ordering controls. All 60 CPU trials and 10 Activity trials passed. The CPU cases exercised production packing and queue ingestion functions; their differences were within run variation. Activity exercised real ACP subprocesses, observer publication, signing/encryption, the browser broker and production UI against a modeled relay. All 500 markers rendered exactly once, and all 2,250 heavy events were delivered. Its one-second publication interval limits visible latency; these local results are not production percentiles. Generated with AI assistance --------- Signed-off-by: Sanket Kanjalkar Co-authored-by: Codex --- Cargo.toml | 5 +++++ 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+) diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml index 340fe02234..912e33c495 100644 --- a/Cargo.toml +++ b/Cargo.toml @@ -158,6 +158,10 @@ buzz-ws-client = { path = "crates/buzz-ws-client" } buzz-relay-mesh = { path = "crates/buzz-relay-mesh" } buzz-datastore-tracing = { path = "crates/buzz-datastore-tracing" } +[profile.release] +lto = "thin" +codegen-units = 4 + # CI profile — builds the relay for desktop e2e. Dependencies keep full # release optimization (warm from main's cache; they carry the runtime hot # path: tokio/sqlx/axum). Workspace crates build at opt-level 1 — enough for @@ -167,6 +171,7 @@ buzz-datastore-tracing = { path = "crates/buzz-datastore-tracing" } [profile.ci] inherits = "release" lto = false +codegen-units = 16 opt-level = 1 [profile.ci.package."*"]