Read-only data handling: a proposal

[Jeffrey A Law]

  In message < 19970915105053.50999@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz >you write:
  >    I still can make them an externally visible variable which forces them to
  > be output under all circumstances. Anyway, there probably should be a switch
  > disabling the merge code as its memory requirements (in both my and original
  > version of the algorithm) can grow very large for `string table' type
  > files. -fno-const-merge ?
Hmm, wait.  I thought we already had code to keep/discard static constants
(-fkeep-static-constants or some such)  Or are we discussing global constants?
If so it seems to me -fkeep-unused-constants might be the right name for
such an option.

  >    I was suggesting deferring it until the end of a function -- it's doesn't
  > have the problems you've mentioned and it can produce better code on some
  > architectures if you have a smart assembler which can convert absolute refs
  > to PC-relative refs whenever possible.
It certainly avoids those problems.  Of course you lose the opportunity to
merge more constants.  But I guess something is better than nothing :-)

The PC-rel stuff is useful, but the number of architectures where such tricks
help are diminishing. 

jeff