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 (not the case for the application but anyway - we are blazingly fast here).

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 will also 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 should also help to reduce the build-time overhead with LTO. If we enable it on the Cargo profile level, users, who install the application with cargo install, will get the LTO-optimized version "automatically". E.g., check cargo-outdated Release profile.

Basically, it can be enabled with the following lines:

[profile.release]
lto = true

Thank you.

P.S. It's more like an improvement idea rather than a bug. I created the issue just because the Discussions are disabled for the repo for now.

[TheQuantumPhysicist]

I added LTO by default for release builds and created a release. Usually I'm cautious about LTO because it can ruin security, like with zeroize, but I think in this case it's fine.

I'll keep this case open for a while, in case someone objects to what we did.

[zamazan4ik]

Usually I'm cautious about LTO because it can ruin security, like with zeroize

Could you please explain this behavior a bit more? Never heard about that before

[TheQuantumPhysicist]

There was once a situation where a cryptographic library implemented a special kind of zeroize, and LTO was making its tests fail due to zeroize failure. If you don't know what zeroize is, it's a name of a crate, referencing the process of manually cleaning memory to prevent leaks of cryptographic keys. I try to be careful and not just throw LTO wherever I go.

[zamazan4ik]

Thank you for the explanation!