Re: -fno-exceptions and libgcc.a

[Per Bothner <bothner at cygnus dot com>]

I don't the any of the suggestions for having the linker drop
the .eh_frame section will work:

1) Many people are still using old-fashioned object-file formats without
named sections.
2) Even if you are using C++ and throwing exceptions, you don't want
your C library, your X libraries, etc to waste a lot of space on .eh_frame.
Educating everyone people to use -fno-exceptions for their C code
is difficult, unproductive, and will rightfully get people annoyed
at unexpected G++ behavior.
3) The .o files will still be large, and people will notice (and complain).
4) Gnerating and throwing .eh_frame sections wastes time and space.
5) In a world with dynamically loaded libraries, you cannot reliably tell
if an application might contain a throw.  Hence the static linker cannot
reliably determine of .eh_frame is unneeded.
6) The proposed solutions are more work than implementing *what people
expect* - i.e. no exception handling support for C, unless requested.

	--Per Bothner
Cygnus Solutions     bothner@cygnus.com     http://www.cygnus.com/~bothner