More agressive entity removal during linking

[Jeffrey A Law]

  In message < Pine.LNX.3.96.991208235251.5211S-100000@wakko.deltatee.com >you wr
ite:
  > 
  > Hi,
  > 
  > I have a m68k embedded target I have been working on, and I noticed that
  > ld links the entire contents of a .o file (even if that .o is in a library
  > archive) even if only a small number of symbols in that .o file are
  > referenced.
That is standard behavior for most linkers, believe it or not.


  > Given the restricted memory in my system I am interested in optimizing
  > this, ideally ld would only include an entity if it was referenced by an
  > already included entity.
This is typically known as garbage collecting linkers.


  > I've read through the linker reference and it seems to me there are no
  > flags to enable a size optimization like this - the only way seems to be
  > to put 1 function/variable per .c file :<
There is an option to do this, but it requires target specific compiler,
assembler and linker support as well as a modern object format such as ELF
(coff is too lame, sorry).

jeff