C++ defines for a 'better' Release mode build in VS

Question

I currently use the following preprocessor defines, and various optimization settings:

• WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
• VC_EXTRALEAN
• NOMINMAX
• _CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS
• _SCL_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS
• _SECURE_SCL=0
• _HAS_ITERATOR_DEBUGGING=0

My question is what other things do fellow SOers use, add, define, in order to get a Release Mode build from VS C++ (2008,2010) to be as performant as possible?

btw, I've tried PGO etc, it does help a bit but nothing that comes to parity with GCC, also I'm not using streams, the C++ i'm talking about its more like C but making use of templates and STL algorithms etc.

As it stands now very simple code segments pale in comparison wrt performance when compared to what GCC produces on say an equivalent x86 machine running linux (2.6+ kernel) using 02.

Side-Note: I believe a lot of the issues relate directly to the STL version (Dinkum) provided by MS. Could people please elaborate on experiences using STLPort etc with VS C++.

Answer 1

I don't see how the inclusion of:

_CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS
_SCL_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS

..gives you a better or more performant build. All you are doing is disabling the warnings about the MS CRT deprecated functions. If you are doing this because you know what you are doing and require platform agnostic code fine, otherwise I would reconsider.

UPDATE: Furthermore the compiler can only do so much. I'd wager you would get more performant code if you instrumented and fixed your existing hotspots rather than trying to eek tiny percentage (if that) gains from the compiling and linking phase.

UPDATE2: _HAS_ITERATOR_DEBUGGING cannot be used when compiling release builds anyway according to the MSDN. WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN VC_EXTRALEAN (and probably NOMINMAX although performance isn't the chief reason to disable this) might give you some performance boost although all the rest have dubious value. You should favour correct fast code over (maybe - and I stress maybe) slightly faster but more risk prone code.