-ftest-coverage and .got sections on alpha

[Brad Lucier <lucier at math dot purdue dot edu>]

I have some large program files that compile fine on alphaev6 unless
I use -ftest-coverage and -fprofile-arcs to prepare them for gcov
analysis.  When I do that I get the infamous .got section over 64K
message from the linux loader.  This implies to me that gcc is emitting
many symbols that eventually get into the .o file just for test coverage.

This general problem is dicsussed regularly on the RH alpha-linux mailing
list and the general advice is to place many small objects into an
array, etc., so that they don't require entries in the .got table.
Would it be possible, or a good idea, to do something like this
for the extra information that -ftest-coverage and -fprofile-arcs places
into the .o file?

Brad Lucier