Warnings

When compiling and linking are performed in separate steps, -xipo must be specified in both steps to be effective.

Objects that are compiled without -xipo can be linked freely with objects that are compiled with -xipo.

Libraries do not participate in crossfile interprocedural analysis, even when they are compiled with -xipo, as shown in this example.

example% CC -xipo -xO4 one.cc two.cc three.cc
example% CC -xar -o mylib.a one.o two.o three.o
...
example% CC -xipo -xO4 -o myprog main.cc four.cc mylib.a

In this example, interprocedural optimizations will be performed between one.cc, two.cc and three.cc, and between main.cc and four.cc, but not between main.cc or four.cc and the routines in mylib.a. (The first compilation may generate warnings about undefined symbols, but the interprocedural optimizations will be performed because it is a compile and link step.)

The -xipo option generates significantly larger object files due to the additional information needed to perform optimizations across files. However, this additional information does not become part of the final executable binary file. Any increase in the size of the executable program will be due to the additional optimizations performed.