Reducing shared object file size

[Marcus Clyne <maccaday at gmail dot com>]

Hi,

I'm wondering how I might be able to reduce the size of shared object 
files I'm generating.

I'm using the following commands to generate my files:

gcc -fPIC -o file.o -c src.c                    (which produces a file 
of around 1.5kb)
gcc -v -shared -o file.so file.o -lmylib   (which produces a file of 
around 5.9kb)

Since there are very few commands in my shared object (essentially two 
or three calls to functions in libmylib), and because I've seen many 
shared objects that are much smaller than 5.9kb, I feel I should be able 
to reduce the .so file in size.

Can anyone give me suggestions as to how to do this?  I've tried adding 
-O2 and -O3 to both calls, and there's barely a difference in size.

Also, can anyone tell me what the 4.4kb of data is that represents the 
difference between the two file sizes?

Thanks in advance,

Marcus.