* idea for ld feature: eliding unreferenced input sections
@ 1999-07-07 15:52 Roland McGrath
1999-07-07 16:00 ` Ian Lance Taylor
0 siblings, 1 reply; 5+ messages in thread
From: Roland McGrath @ 1999-07-07 15:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: binutils
How hard do people think it would be to add an ld feature as follows?
I have in mind a new option, perhaps `--remove-unneeded-sections', that
would tell ld to discard from the output any input sections to which no
relocs in other sections refer. It could be positional and apply to some
input files and not others, or it could just take the input section
containing the entry point as the root of the section dependency graph.
I am thinking of using this in combination with something like gcc's
`-ffunction-sections' to achieve the effect of splitting up object files
and omitting the unreferenced ones from the link.
You can think of it as a moral equivalent to `--no-whole-archive' (the
default state of the switch being inverted, of course), considering each
object file to be an "archive of sections". (The important difference is
that you still have a local symbol scope in each "archive" object file.)
Comments?
Thanks,
Roland
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
* Re: idea for ld feature: eliding unreferenced input sections
1999-07-07 15:52 idea for ld feature: eliding unreferenced input sections Roland McGrath
@ 1999-07-07 16:00 ` Ian Lance Taylor
1999-07-07 16:13 ` Roland McGrath
1999-07-07 20:35 ` Mark E.
0 siblings, 2 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: Ian Lance Taylor @ 1999-07-07 16:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: roland; +Cc: binutils
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 18:52:40 -0400
From: Roland McGrath <roland@frob.com>
How hard do people think it would be to add an ld feature as follows?
I have in mind a new option, perhaps `--remove-unneeded-sections', that
would tell ld to discard from the output any input sections to which no
relocs in other sections refer. It could be positional and apply to some
input files and not others, or it could just take the input section
containing the entry point as the root of the section dependency graph.
It's a great idea, and Richard Henderson has already implemented it
for most ELF targets. It's called --gc-sections.
Ian
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
* Re: idea for ld feature: eliding unreferenced input sections
1999-07-07 16:00 ` Ian Lance Taylor
@ 1999-07-07 16:13 ` Roland McGrath
1999-07-07 20:35 ` Mark E.
1 sibling, 0 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: Roland McGrath @ 1999-07-07 16:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Ian Lance Taylor; +Cc: binutils
> It's a great idea, and Richard Henderson has already implemented it
> for most ELF targets. It's called --gc-sections.
Well, there you go. That'll show me to read the documentation in a
released version instead of the current development sources!
Thanks,
Roland
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
* Re: idea for ld feature: eliding unreferenced input sections
1999-07-07 16:00 ` Ian Lance Taylor
1999-07-07 16:13 ` Roland McGrath
@ 1999-07-07 20:35 ` Mark E.
1999-07-07 21:02 ` Richard Henderson
1 sibling, 1 reply; 5+ messages in thread
From: Mark E. @ 1999-07-07 20:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: binutils
> It's a great idea, and Richard Henderson has already implemented it
> for most ELF targets. It's called --gc-sections.
Just out of curiousity, how hard would it be to implement for COFF
targets?
Mark
---
Mark Elbrecht, snowball3@bigfoot.com
http://snowball.frogspace.net/
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
* Re: idea for ld feature: eliding unreferenced input sections
1999-07-07 20:35 ` Mark E.
@ 1999-07-07 21:02 ` Richard Henderson
0 siblings, 0 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: Richard Henderson @ 1999-07-07 21:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Mark E.; +Cc: binutils
On Wed, Jul 07, 1999 at 11:35:29PM -0400, Mark E. wrote:
> Just out of curiousity, how hard would it be to implement for COFF
> targets?
Not too bad.
r~
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
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1999-07-07 15:52 idea for ld feature: eliding unreferenced input sections Roland McGrath
1999-07-07 16:00 ` Ian Lance Taylor
1999-07-07 16:13 ` Roland McGrath
1999-07-07 20:35 ` Mark E.
1999-07-07 21:02 ` Richard Henderson
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