Some results on running 'g++ -E | wc -l' with the appropriate includes/defines and a single #include in a compilation unit: boost/signal.hpp : 62141 boost/signals/trackable.hpp : 40849 boost/tokenizer.hpp : 39490 boost/iterator/indirect_iterator : 36922 boost/signals/connection.hpp : 34957 boost/function.hpp : 31379 boost/array.hpp : 30205 boost/utility.hpp : 30063 boost/cregex.hpp : 21575 boost/shared_ptr.hpp : 17469 boost/scoped_ptr.hpp : 11411 boost/crc.hpp : 5851 boost/tuple/tuple.hpp : 4927 boost/scoped_array.hpp : 3029 boost/assert.hpp : 52 boost/current_function.hpp : 21 string : 18781 vector : 11994 map : 12467 list : 11134 deque : 11805 iosfwd : 6462 iostream : 29529 QObject : 5601 QString : 3876 QList : 1931 QVector : 4165 QMap : 2831 QHash : 7098 QRegExp : 3959 (boost/cregex.hpp : 21575 QSharedData : 838 (boost/shared_ptr.hpp : 17469) Revision 21692: non-monolithic Total: compiled: 17310566 real: 150056 ratio: 115 graphics: compiled: 669162 real: 2617 ratio: 255 frontends/qt4: compiled: 4386626 real: 27020 ratio: 162 support: compiled: 1432410 real: 9600 ratio: 149 mathed: compiled: 2357984 real: 19339 ratio: 121 insets: compiled: 2415915 real: 21566 ratio: 112 src/*.cpp: compiled: 4318608 real: 54814 ratio: 78 Revision 24415: non-monolithic frontends/qt4: compiled: 4296379 real: 34614 ratio: 124 insets: compiled: 2535206 real: 22128 ratio: 114 Revision 24415: monolithic frontends/qt4: compiled: 209600 real: 34614 ratio: 6 insets: compiled: 122255 real: 22128 ratio: 5