linker option -s

linker option -s

[Oliver Lange]

Hello everyone,

I found a link to this mailing list at

http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html

but i don't know how to subscribe to the list, so i can't read
answers within the list.

I'd just like to see a better documentation for the linker option
'-s' in future versions of the manual. The current single-line
description is, however, unsufficient. Removing 'relocation information'
could be misunderstood as removing 'reloc tables', which would make
an executable unloadable, which is in fact not true. I wonder if
I could use this option when linking a dynamic library - can applications
still find library functions if a lib was linked using -s ?
And what kinda symbols are removed ? I still have absolutely no clue
what this option is exactly doing, but i'm using it by default..

Have a nice day..

Re: linker option -s

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Oliver Lange <bloodrock@bloody.in-berlin.de> writes:

> I found a link to this mailing list at
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html
> 
> but i don't know how to subscribe to the list, so i can't read
> answers within the list.

See http://gcc.gnu.org/lists.html

> I'd just like to see a better documentation for the linker option
> '-s' in future versions of the manual. The current single-line
> description is, however, unsufficient. Removing 'relocation information'
> could be misunderstood as removing 'reloc tables', which would make
> an executable unloadable, which is in fact not true. I wonder if
> I could use this option when linking a dynamic library - can applications
> still find library functions if a lib was linked using -s ?
> And what kinda symbols are removed ? I still have absolutely no clue
> what this option is exactly doing, but i'm using it by default..

In the linker manual the -s option has a different one line
description: ``Omit all symbol information from the output file.''

The -s option strips the normal symbol table and the debugging
information, but not the dynamic symbol table or the dynamic relocs.
As you say, stripping the dynamic information would make it impossible
to run the executable.  I think it would work to use -s when creating
a shared library.

Ian