Incremental linking, ELF, & templates => REDUNDANT CODE

[Ian Lance Taylor]

   Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 06:56:17 -0400 (EDT)
   From: "Brad M. Garcia" <bgarcia@fore.com>

   It appears that when you do an incremental link (ld -r), this
   cancellation will occur during that link, but subsequent links will
   fail to cancel redundant code.

   When a *.o file is created from a C++ source file, it has a number of
   sections called .gnu.linkonce.*.  When the incremental link is attempted,
   it appears that redundant copies of these sections are removed, but then
   these sections are simply rolled into the .text section of the resulting
   *.o file.  Once in the .text section, weak symbols cannot be removed.

   This seems like a bug in the linker.  Has anyone heard of a fix?
   Am I wrong in my analysis?  I'm using binutils 2.8.1.

This is a bug in the binutils 2.8.1 release.  I believe that it will
be fixed in the upcoming binutils 2.9 release.

Linker bug reports should really go to bug-gnu-utils@gnu.org rather
than egcs@cygnus.com.

Ian